


and I think that you're the best of me (but then again I'm biased)

by drunkhemingway



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Blutara - Freeform, F/F, F/M, Fire Lord Zuko, Gen, Mutual Pining, Zutara, aang and katara break up, bluetara, nothing explicit but there may be mentions of nudity at some points, ozai dies bc I hate him, tw for mentions of parental abuse bc Ozai ya know
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:28:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 37,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25744339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drunkhemingway/pseuds/drunkhemingway
Summary: Determined to revive the Southern style of waterbending, Katara travels to the Caldera at Zuko’s invitation to search for information on the Southern Water Tribe in the extensive Royal Library. There she finds a dangerous tangle of political intrigue and civil unrest – and at the heart of it all, a silent stranger in a Water Tribe mask.(Or, no one ever told Katara that Zuko was the Blue Spirit.)A Bluetara fic, using the Zutara Week 2020 prompts (for structure, such as it is). Likely going to be around 10 chapters but that is a rough guess.Title from "Far Between" by the Jivin' Scientists.
Relationships: Aang/Katara (Avatar), Katara/The Blue Spirit (Avatar), Katara/Zuko (Avatar), Mai/Ty Lee (Avatar), Sokka/Suki (Avatar)
Comments: 121
Kudos: 256
Collections: Zutara Week 2020





	1. (Family) Reunion

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first (published) fic so I am quite shamelessly begging for validation. Not sorry. Also, I *know* that it's not really a Zutara week collection bc I'm hella late, but I used it for structure so I'm tagging it anyway. 
> 
> Ch. 1: Katara saves Zuko's life, and is left with choices to make.

The first thing he remembers, after the blinding pain, is her hands. The calloused touch of her slender fingers against his blistered and scorched skin, the way his heart leaps erratically against her palms. He could have sworn it had stopped altogether. He could have sworn her hands were the last thing he would ever feel.

Then there is a new pain, a different pain; an ache, a blessedly and horribly deep ache in his chest as she forces his heart to take up its normal rhythm.

“Breathe,” she whispers.

 _I’m trying,_ he tries to tell her.

“Breathe,” she orders.

He breathes.

_Thank you, Katara._

He thinks she says something to him, but the now-steady beating of his heart soothes him back into darkness, and he sleeps.

_***  
_

_In dreams, Zuko wears no scar._

_Ursa runs her fingers down the left side of his face, and cries. “Don’t forget,” she tells him._

_“I’m trying to remember,” he says, but now Katara stands in front of him with serious eyes and cradles his face in her hand._

_“I can heal this,” she says._

_“Heal what?” Zuko asks, puzzled. “What did I do?”_

_Her face twists into a scowl and her ocean-deep eyes sour with hatred. “You took my mother away from me,” she hisses, and he is falling, falling, twisting in unnatural ways as she tilts her hands, spider-like, into spiky bending poses and shoves him down._

_“Take my mother instead,” says Zuko with Yon Rha’s voice – did Zuko kill Kya, or did Yon Rha? Did Yon Rha kill Kya, did Zuko kill Kya, did Yon Rha kill Kya, did Azula kill did Ozai did Zuko did Zuko did Zuko –_

_Then suddenly Katara’s blue eyes melt into gold, mad and cruel, and lightning surges towards him while Azula laughs. As he crumples, Ursa screams._

_***_

Sokka limps into Zuko’s room, one leg bound in a cast, and knows instantly that his mission is doomed. Hakoda had ordered his son to make Katara rest. Sokka thinks that maybe Hakoda really _has_ been away too long if he thinks anyone makes Katara do anything.

The bags under her eyes are bruise-purple. She has bandages wrapped around various wounds, and Sokka can smell the scent of burn salve. A dozen small, shiny new scars mark the spots where Azula’s blue fire licked at Katara’s bronzed skin. The new Fire Lord lays sleeping on the wide bed, his chest bound with gauze and sweat covering his brow. His right eye twitches and roams in time with his dreams.

“You didn’t have to let those burns scar,” Sokka says. His sister has not looked up at him.

“If he dies, none of it mattered,” Katara says hoarsely. “I couldn’t waste my energy healing myself.”

“You need to rest,” Sokka tells her. He tries to be gentle, tries to make sure she doesn’t realize that seeing her so fragile and so tired nearly kills him. He hasn’t seen her like this since Azula’s lightning bolt lit the caverns below Ba Sing Se painfully blue. He hasn’t seen her so worried since Aang lay motionless on a Fire Nation steamer. Sokka had hoped (fruitlessly) that he would never see his sister, his Katara, unmovable and steady as a glacier, that way again.

Sokka refuses to think about what it will do to Katara if Zuko doesn’t survive.

“Dad’s worried about you,” Sokka says. It’s the wrong thing.

“Dad _should_ be worried about what will happen if I can’t save Zuko,” Katara snarls. “Go away and let me concentrate.”

“Okay,” Sokka says, soft. “But, Katara – remember we need you, too.”

“I know,” she says, never taking her eyes from Zuko’s face. “But the world needs _him_.”

***

Katara feels every moment of the four days that it takes for Zuko to wake up as though the seconds were tally marks being carved into her skin. She sleeps only when she can’t keep her eyes open, and when that happens, she simply slumps over in her chair next to Zuko’s bed. The Fire Nation healers come, and at first, they sneer at her and order her to leave. She erects a wall of ice around Zuko’s bed and covers it in spikes. The head healer convinces her to let him examine Zuko, and he is impressed enough with her work to order the servants to make sure that Katara has access to a steady supply of fresh, cool water. After that, she lowers the wall – but she still doesn’t let anyone too close to Zuko, and never without her supervision. The healers begin to look at her with respect when they examine the scar over Zuko’s heart, and the way that his heart beats steadily – if weakly.

It takes two days for Zuko’s heart to beat without Katara’s assistance. It takes another night for his fever to break. And then, after what feels like a lifetime, he opens his eyes and blinks at her. He lets out a sound that might have been her name or might have just been a sigh and goes back to sleep. Katara cries.

The head palace healer (whose name, she learns, is Chun) tells her gently but firmly that Zuko’s heartbeat is stable, his fever has broken, his burns are all but healed – and, frankly, she could do with a bath and a change of clothes. Katara, feeling hopeful for the first time in days, lets Chun usher her out of Zuko’s rooms. She’ll go find Sokka, she thinks, and Toph and Suki, and Aang – let them know that Zuko will live. Katara realizes, belatedly, that she still doesn’t know exactly what happened during Aang’s battle with Ozai. She needs to see her family, reassure herself that they’re okay, touch their faces. Cry with them, for those who are gone. Figure out how to move forward.

It’s these thoughts that are spinning through her head as she stumbles through the palace. She sits down on a bench, intending only to catch her breath – how did she get so weak in only a matter of days? When did she last eat? – and it’s here that Sokka finds her, several hours later, her breathing steady and deep and her head pillowed on one arm.

***

“I’m told you saved my nephew’s life,” Iroh says, placing a cup of tea in front of Katara. His eyes are kind, and his voice quavers. “I thank you, Master Katara. My nephew and I owe you many thanks.”

She shakes her head. “He saved mine, too,” she says. “Azula would’ve killed me with that lightning blast.” She sips, smiles. “Thank you for the tea, General.”

He beams at her and slides into the chair next to her. The sitting room she’s hiding in is small, and holds only a few plump armchairs, a small table, and a bookshelf in need of dusting. “I would be honored if you would call me Iroh, Master Katara,” he says, inclining his head to her.

Katara returns the gesture. She thinks, privately, that nobody in Fire Nation colors would have bowed to the Water Tribe peasant a few days ago – except maybe Iroh. She knows him to be a powerful bender, a general of unmatched political acumen and connection, the man who in a different life would have worn the Fire Lord’s hairpiece. But there is a humility in his eyes that she likes. “Iroh,” she agrees. “It’s just Katara, please. What happens now? Now that the war is over?”

He sighs. “Ah, if only it was that easy. War brings great turmoil; but change brings even more. I think we will find, Katara, that our work has only just begun. Prince Zuko must be enthroned as the Fire Lord – and then we must all find a way to live together.”

Katara thinks of Hama, of ice-daggers suspended over Yon Rha’s terrified face, of Jet drowning a village. Of her mother. “People hate the Fire Nation,” she says quietly. “Most of them have reason to.”

Iroh nods gravely. “Yes,” he says with unflinching honesty, and Katara is glad he does, because she very much wants to trust this kind old man that Zuko loves so much. “There is a long way to go in healing the world. My grandfather and my father and my brother caused much suffering, and the four nations are imbalanced.”

“Why didn’t you stop it?” she blurts. She doesn’t mean to say it out loud, but this is not the first time she has wondered.

He measures her with serious golden eyes, set deep in his wrinkled face. “When I was a younger man, I believed I could make a change from within,” Iroh says slowly. “I thought that if I proved my worth as a general, as a son, then my father would listen when I cautioned him against escalating the war. I thought that when I was Fire Lord, I could make a real difference. But then…” his eyebrows furrow, and his eyes close. “Then I lost my beloved son, my Lu Ten.”

“I’m so sorry,” Katara murmurs.

Iroh smiles sadly. “Thank you,” he says. “My son would have liked you, I think. He appreciated a fighting spirit. But once he died…my own spirit was broken. I realized, then, how foolish and how misguided I had been. But by the time my eyes were open to the destruction I had caused, my brother had seized power and I was too late. I returned home to the news that I would never be Fire Lord.”

“Why didn’t you fight back?”

“I thought there was a better way,” Iroh says with a shake of his shaggy head. “The White Lotus, I thought, could bring the nations together. And maybe the Fire Nation could be brought back to the path of balance and kindness. Especially when I saw my nephew, how gentle he was as a child…but Ozai tried to kill that, too.”

“He didn’t,” Katara says.

“No,” Iroh agrees. “Ozai thought Prince Zuko was weak, and he was wrong. But I, too, was wrong, Katara, for thinking that old men talking around pai sho tables would bring an end to the slaughter and the hatred. I can only thank the spirits that they sent you and your friends to us in time to save us all.”

Katara focuses on her cup of tea, with one flick of her pointer finger sends little waves shuddering across the surface of the liquid. “And yet Ozai lives.”

 _I couldn’t do it, Katara,_ she hears Aang’s voice echo in her ears. _I nearly did it, but…I realized there was a better way._

“The Avatar is a gentle soul,” Iroh says. “Showing mercy to one’s greatest enemy is a strength that few can muster.”

“Ozai is responsible for _millions_ of deaths,” Katara bursts out. “He was going to wipe out the Earth Kingdom – he nearly wiped out my people! How does a person like that deserve mercy?” She feels the heavy knot in her chest, and carefully does not name it anger.

Iroh tilts his head and sips his tea. For a moment Katara thinks that he’s going to say something about no one deserving mercy, or something equally empty and wise-sounding, and she wonders how angry Zuko would be with her if she froze his uncle to a chair. “Perhaps we all would have slept easier if the Avatar had struck Ozai down,” Iroh says thoughtfully. “It will not sit easily on Prince Zuko to try his father as a war criminal.”

Katara reels back as though Iroh has slapped her. “War criminal – why would Zuko try Ozai as a war criminal?”

“My brother’s power is not limited to his bending. He was a powerful bender, but he is also a deadly manipulator and a brilliant strategist. He must be punished for the havoc he has wreaked on the world, publicly. Prince Zuko must show the world that he will be a different kind of Fire Lord from his father, and his father’s father. He must show that the Fire Nation is committed to justice. And that means that Ozai must be punished for his crimes.”

“Good,” Katara says savagely, and then she remembers the lost look on Zuko’s face when he told them about his last conversation with his father. He’ll do it, she thinks, because it’s the right thing to do. The only thing to do. But putting his father on trial will kill yet another piece of Zuko’s gentle heart. Katara adds it to her mental tally of Ozai’s sins.

Iroh finishes his tea and stands. “I hope to see you tomorrow at my nephew’s coronation,” he says cheerfully, as though they have not been talking of war and death and heartbreak. “Prince Zuko says he has not seen you since he awoke.”

Katara feels her cheeks heat and prays she is not blushing. “I’ll be there,” she says, avoiding Iroh’s second statement. “I wouldn’t miss Zuko’s coronation.”

Iroh smiles over his shoulder as he leaves the room. “My nephew is lucky in his friends. I hope to see more of you, Katara.”

Then he is gone, and Katara is left in a half-forgotten sitting room with only ghosts and cooling tea for company.

***

Zuko scratches absently at his chest as Mai glares at him. “I would’ve been angry at you if you died, you know,” she says, flat.

His lips twitch into a half-smile. “I wouldn’t have been too happy about it either.”

“I’m glad you didn’t.”

“Me too.”

“But it’s not like I’m going to write a thank-you card to that Water Tribe peasant.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to,” Zuko agrees easily. He has no idea what Mai wants from him, but he knows the snide tone of her voice means that she’s barely hanging on to her emotions.

“And I’m still mad at you for breaking up with me in a letter,” she snaps.

He nods.

“But I also know you’re going to need friends around you, so I’ll stay in the capital for a while.” Mai ends the declaration with a disdainful sniff. “Ty Lee said she’s staying too.”

“Oh,” Zuko says stupidly. Then – “Oh. Um. Thanks, I guess.”

“We’ll stay in the palace,” she informs him.

“Okay.”

“You can put us in the same room.”

“Oh.” A pause. “ _Oh._ ”

"You were gone a long time.”

Zuko rubs a hand across his mouth just to make sure his jaw isn’t hanging open. “Yeah, I was. I’m…happy for you, Mai.”

She rolls her eyes. “Whatever,” she says, and leans in to kiss his cheek. “If I’m staying to watch your back, I want a place on the Inner Council.”

Zuko nearly chokes. It probably _is_ wise to start putting people he knows he can trust on the Council, and there are few people he trusts more than Mai, but there’s only so many surprises he can handle in a five-minute span. “I’d be honored to have you on my Council,” he says faintly.

“Good,” she says firmly as she gets up to leave. “This is going to be a bad year, Zuko.”

He sighs. “I know.”

“I’m staying because you’re my friend and I love you,” Mai tells him. “But you’re going to need more than just me when your father’s generals come for you.” She sweeps out of the room. Dramatic exits suit her as well as her knives.

Zuko stares after her. _More than just me_ , he repeats to himself. He refuses to dwell on what it means, even while dreams of blue lightning and bluer eyes dance in the back of his mind. He has work to do.

***

The first time he sees her in person after the Agni Kai is at his coronation party. She’s dressed in a silk gown cut in the formal Fire Nation style, but in a deep shade of royal blue. Her hair is swept into an elaborate half-knot, with the bottom half lying loose and wavy against her back. Her customary loops, decorated with glinting beads shaped like crescent moons sweep away from her temples and towards her topknot. Katara smiles at him, and Zuko reminds himself sternly that there’s no reason for his mouth to be so dry.

Katara bows deeply, gracefully. He inclines his head; she rises fluidly, as though her very bones were made of water. “Fire Lord Zuko,” she says with subtle humor. “The Southern Water Tribe sends its regards, and prays that Yue and La will bless your reign.”

“Master Katara,” Zuko says, with a bow. Fire Nation nobility murmur at the sight of the Fire Lord bowing to a waterbending nobody. He refuses to hear them. “Would you honor me with a dance?”

Her eyes widen, then narrow suspiciously. “A dance?”

He wants to laugh. He doesn’t dare. “Yes, a dance.”

She casts a glance at the snickering nobility. “Zuko, I don’t know how to dance,” she whispers.

He smiles conspiratorially. “I do,” he whispers back. “Trust me?”

On those words, Katara puts her hand in his and lets him lead her out to the dance floor.

“Sorry,” he says, placing one hand on her waist and arranging her hands in the proper position. “This was the only way to talk without being overheard. Just follow me, okay? Like the dodging exercises we did on Ember Island.”

“I remember,” Katara says with a smile. “Yin and yang. We based them off waterbending moves, remember?”

“I remember,” Zuko says roughly. Mostly what he remembers about their Ember Island stay is how mindlessly happy he was. How easy it was to forget Ozai and the comet and destiny, and just practice his firebending and watch his friends build sandcastles.

For a little while, anyway.

“What did you want to talk about?”

What _did_ he want to talk about? It’s easy to forget, with her smiling up at him and the nobles far enough away that they can’t overhear. It’s the first time in days that anyone has looked at him and seen a boy instead of the Fire Lord. Seen Zuko instead of the scar and the crown.

“I wanted to thank you,” he starts.

Katara rolls her eyes and swats him on the shoulder. “Don’t you dare,” she orders. “I wouldn’t have had to do anything if you hadn’t had saved my life in the first place. You jumped in front of _lightning_ for me, Zuko.”

“You’re my friend,” he says, startled. “Why wouldn’t I have?”

“You’re a good person,” Katara says seriously. “Thank you for saving my life.”

“Hey, if I’m not allowed to thank you, you’re not allowed to thank me either,” Zuko points out. She laughs, and he wonders what it was he said that was funny. But her easy joy is such a relief after days of heavy pain and apprehension that he smiles more broadly than he has since before the Agni Kai.

“Uncle is having a grand opening for the Jasmine Dragon in Ba Sing Se next week,” Zuko says. “He wants you all to come. He called it a family reunion.”

Katara looks startled. “Ba Sing Se? Iroh isn’t staying here?”

Zuko shakes his head. “He wants to open his tea shop,” he says. “I’ll write to him if I need advice, but honestly…it’s probably better this way. If it looks like he’s the real power behind the throne –”

Katara nods. “– then you look weak. There needs to be a clear shift in power, an obvious change. So people know that it’s not just another power struggle; it’s a new dynasty.”

“Yes, exactly.”

She grins at his surprise. “I may not be royalty, but I have eyes, Zuko. And I learn quickly.”

"No,” he says, and then curses his tongue when she narrows her eyes at him. “I mean, yes, you do. Learn quickly, that is! I just meant that, well.” He clears his throat. “I thought Fire Nation politics would be the sort of thing you didn’t bother paying attention to.”

Her face clouds. “It should be.” They part, twirl, come back together. “But the Fire Nation has to stay strong right now, so that the rest of the world can heal. If the Fire Nation falls apart, the other nations won’t have the stability they need to put themselves back together. It’s in all of our best interests for you to have a solid place on the throne.”

“You sound like Uncle,” Zuko remarks.

“He and I have a few talks over tea lately.”

“That _definitely_ sounds like Uncle.” He falls silent. Zuko feels like there is something he _should_ say to her but can’t. Something he should acknowledge but won’t.

The song ends. Katara backs away from him. “Thank you for the dance, Fire Lord Zuko,” she says. There is humor in her voice, but her eyes are questioning.

He bows to her, as deeply as he would have bowed to his father in another life. “The pleasure was mine, Master Katara,” he says, and he wonders if that was the answer she was looking for.

***

Ba Sing Se is still noisy, still crowded, and still – unfortunately, Toph thinks privately – full of Earth Kingdom nobles. As a brand-new Official War Hero, she’s had to put up with more simpering bureaucrats in the last week than she ever wanted to deal with in her life. Sparky’s coronation had been long, hot, and boring, and had been followed by a long, hot, boring banquet that had lasted _hours_ and required formal court dress. Toph had told the Fire Nation tailor Zuko sent to her in no uncertain terms that she wouldn’t be wearing a skirt, and they could forget about shoes entirely.

(Toph won on the shoes, but she lost on the skirt. She refuses to admit to anyone that the flowy green dress the tailor had whipped up was actually pretty comfortable. She _especially_ refuses to admit that she kept it.)

Returning to the Earth Kingdom had nearly been worse; it was, it turned out, just a bit awkward being welcomed home as a war hero while your parents still have a bounty on you. A day or two and a letter home had cleared _that_ up, but then word had gotten out that the Avatar and his friends were staying with a tea-maker in the Upper Ring, and the grand re-opening of Iroh’s tea shop had been so overcrowded that Toph is shocked the floorboards hadn’t given out under the weight.

But the Jasmine Dragon in the hours after Iroh has closed the doors to customers is blessedly, gloriously quiet. The only people left in the tea shop are the odd little hodgepodge group that has become Toph’s family. It’s a far cry from the stilted atmosphere of her parents’ house, she thinks as Sokka and Katara bicker and Ty Lee squeals over Mai beating Suki at pai sho – and thank _spirits_ for that. The setting sun casts a warm glow over the room, and Toph reclines in a chair and props her feet on a table, so that for a moment the only thing in the world that exists is the sound of her friends’ voices.

It’s only when she hears the _swish_ of Katara’s silk dress headed out to the balcony, followed by the unique tap of Aang’s light footsteps, that Toph puts her feet back down to the stone floor and grins. _This_ she wants to see.

From her spot near the door, Toph can hear Aang perfectly when he says, “Sokka says you guys are headed back to the South Pole in a few days.” Twinkletoes is even more fidgety than usual – though Toph _has_ noticed that he gets like that around Katara. She would’ve thought the whole ‘saving the world’ thing would have cured him of that, but apparently not.

“There’s a ship headed south with trade supplies from the Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom,” Katara replies. “Sokka and I are going to catch a ride home with them.” Toph can hear the gentle smile in the waterbender’s voice. “We figured that Appa deserves a rest after all these months.”

“I could take you,” Aang says, a little defensively. “Appa loves you guys! And he doesn’t mind the cold.”

“I thought you wanted to start looking for other airbenders.” Katara’s voice is quizzical, lightly surprised at Aang’s tone. “I didn’t think you’d want to take time away from that just to take us home.”

“I don’t!”

 _Cool it, Twinkletoes_ , Toph thinks, popping a nut into her mouth and crunching down. _Don’t overplay it._

Aang takes a deep breath. “What I mean is, I was hoping that you would come with me. To look for more airbenders. So, I could take you home for a visit, and then…”

Aang’s heart is pounding, Toph notes. Katara’s is not.

“Oh,” Katara says, and Toph rolls her eyes at the genuine note of surprise. “I guess I…people might need us at home, Aang – the war’s been really hard on –”

"I know,” he says quickly. “But the war’s over now! And we won’t be gone forever. And I –” the Avatar gulps. “I need you, too, Katara.”

 _There’re the magic words_ , Toph thinks, curling her lip into a sneer. Mother Sweetness can’t say no to Aang. Not when he _needs_ her.

“I know you said you needed time to think,” Aang continues. “But I…I really want you to come with me, Katara. The war is over now, and I feel like you and me are just _supposed_ to be together. I really like you, and I –” he stops, and Toph feels her jaw drop open as Katara leans in to kiss Aang.

Aang’s heartbeat goes wild, ecstatic. Katara’s stays steady as a drum. Toph notes the difference with a small twinge of sadness and wonders how long it will be before the Avatar and his ‘forever girl’ break each other’s hearts.


	2. Interlude: Guilty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Interlude: Ozai's trial. Set between the events of Sozin's Comet and the next chapter.

“Ozai, son of Azulon, once Fire Lord, once Prince of the Fire Nation, you have been found guilty of crimes against the people of the Fire Nation and of the world. Do you wish to plead for mercy?” The sage’s voice booms like a cannon.

Silence can burn as badly as flame, it seems.

“Then let the Fire Lord proclaim your fate.”

Two sets of gold eyes meet across the throne room. One voice breaks, ever so slightly –

“Ozai, once Fire Lord. For your crimes against the Fire Nation and the world, you are sentenced to die. May Agni take mercy on your spirit.”

The royal court of the Fire Lord does not cry out. They do not protest. There is only silence as the man they once called master is led from the room to meet his death. The boy who now sits on his throne seems to age before their eyes as he stares sightlessly at the great doors, which close so slowly behind the disgraced king that one might think they are paying their own quiet tribute to the death of the last of the once-dishonored prince’s innocence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will die on this hill: Ozai would have gathered military power and overthrown Zuko and restarted the war in a hot second, with or without firebending. He needed to die. Aang refusing to kill Ozai just meant that Zuko had to do it through a trial and execution. There will be, like, one scene later dealing with the emotional fallout of Zuko literally sentencing his own father to death (maybe two? Idk) but if you hate the fact that this happened that's the most it will get mentioned!


	3. (Im)balance and (Dis)harmony

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aang finds the wandering children of the last Air Nomads. Katara goes back to the South Pole and feels the imbalance in teaching Northern style waterbending.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ilysm, all of you. Literally this is the first fic I have ever published and if it wasn't for all of you that commented/left kudos, this would have died a sad and lonely death in my drafts folder. But, you all are wonderful and inspiring, so here is another chapter for you. Enjoy!
> 
> (Prompt for this chapter was 'counterpart.' I know it's not in the title, but I worked it into the body of the chapter, so I'm calling it a win.)

It takes one year, ten months, two weeks, and four days for Aang to discover the group of nomads with gray eyes and black hair. It takes three days after that for Katara to finally put a name to the feeling that has been growing in her chest for months and months and months: discontent. It is only when, three months after that, Aang announces that he is taking the more spiritually minded nomads back to the Southern Air Temple to train them as acolytes that she manages to put voice to it.

“Aang,” Katara says. Her hands shake; her voice does not. “I’m not coming with you.”

He turns to look at her, and she flinches. “Oh,” he says. “Okay.”

Katara blinks, shocked. “That’s it?” she demands. “Just ‘okay’?”

“Well, you’ll catch up with us, right?” Aang asks, confused.

Katara closes her eyes. Intentionally exposing Aang to anything that might hurt him grates against years of habit and fondness. “No, Aang,” she says, quiet as though modulating the volume of her voice will take the sting out of it. “I won’t. I…I don’t want to go to the Southern Air Temple.”

Gray eyes fill with understanding, followed swiftly by sorrow. “Oh,” Aang says again. “You’re not happy here.”

She shakes her head. She doesn’t quite trust herself to speak.

“You’re not happy with _me_.”

“That’s not it,” she says automatically. Still trying to protect his feelings, even while she’s leaving him. “Well…sort of, I guess. It’s not _you_ , Aang, it’s just that you have this whole life that you’re building. You’re training new acolytes and you’re busy being the Avatar and you’re doing great things, but it’s just not what I want. I don’t want to follow you around for the rest of my life watching you be the Avatar. I need more than that.” She stops, gulps. “And I don’t think I can get it here.”

“I thought we were in love.”

“I don’t think that’s enough, Aang. I mean…there will always be a part of me – a _big_ part – that loves you.” She’d rather he slapped her than look at her with his eyes so large and full of hurt. The words leave her mouth slowly, like a glacier melting into the sea. There is no warmth in their wake; only a new hollow place inside her. “But if I stay with you, all of the _other_ parts of me are going to disappear.”

He nods, once. “Okay.”

“Stop saying that,” she snaps.

Aang cocks his head and evaluates her with serious gray eyes. “What do you want me to say, Katara? Do you want to have a big fight about it? If you’re unhappy, then you should do what you need to change that. I wish that being with me was enough to make you happy, but if it’s not…well, you should do what you need.”

“What if I need to fight about it?” Katara knows she’s being unreasonable, but she can’t quite stop herself.

“Sure,” Aang agrees easily. “Do you want to start, or d’you want me to?”

Katara stares at him for a long moment, then finally gives into the laughter that is gurgling up in her throat. Aang grins at her and holds out one arm. Out of habit, still giggling even as tears come into her eyes, Katara leans into his side.

For a moment, the fifteen-year-old Avatar pulls her close, his forever girl, his best girl, his first girl. Then he lets her go, because that is what she needs. “I think I sort of knew we were going in different directions,” Aang says ruefully. “More and more over the last few months, it’s just felt…distant.” He smiles down at her. When did he grow so tall and lanky? “I think maybe…maybe you’re right, and love isn’t enough. Or maybe the way we love each other just isn’t the _right_ kind of love. I never really thought about that before. I suppose I thought that we’d be together forever, and it would just be easy.”

It should have been easy, Katara thinks. It should have been natural and simple for her to love Aang the way he needed her to, the way she’d thought she was supposed to. But she has been forcing it for more than two years, and she is tired. “I’m sorry,” she whispers.

“Me too,” Aang says, and presses a kiss to her forehead. He pulls back and gives her a slight smile as he wipes at a tear she hadn’t felt fall onto her cheek. “Friends, still?”

“Always,” she says fiercely, holding his hand to her cheek. “ _Always,_ Aang.” To comfort them both, Katara tucks herself back under Aang’s arm, and they stay like that, silent and somehow easier with each other than they have been in months. It is a quiet, gentle heartbreak they share as they wordlessly bid farewell to what could have been; but it is a heartbreak, nonetheless.

Katara thinks, briefly, that if she has loved and been loved by the Avatar and found that lacking, perhaps she will be lucky to find something that satisfies her. Maybe she will spend the rest of her life chasing something. Maybe she will just watch, discontented, as Aang nurtures the Air Temples and Zuko heals the Fire Nation and Toph starts her metalbending academy and Sokka rebuilds the Southern Water Tribe.

It is a thought that chills her more deeply than any South Pole blizzard ever could.

***

The moment that Appa touches down outside the village walls and Katara slides down from the saddle and into her brother’s waiting arms, Sokka knows something is wrong. He looks up, past his sister’s head, to where Aang leaps lightly down from Appa’s head. Aang gives Sokka a sad, tiny smile.

“You didn’t tell us you were coming,” Sokka says, pulling back to examine Katara’s face.

She beams at him, almost brightly enough to disguise the tightness around her eyes. “Aang is dropping me off on his way to the Southern Air Temple,” she says, which is not really an answer – but Sokka supposes that he didn’t actually ask a question.

Sokka breaks away from his sister to hug Aang. Then he slings one arm around the Avatar’s shoulders, and one arm around Katara’s, and steers them towards the village. “Dad is away, leading a hunt,” Sokka announces, “but Gran-Gran will be so happy to see you!” If anyone can tell what is wrong with Katara, he muses, it will be the steely old woman with her penetrating gaze. Gran-Gran _always_ knows what is wrong with her babies.

True to unflappable form, Gran-Gran displays not a single ounce of surprise at the sight of the South’s prodigal waterbender. Rather she greets Katara with a kiss on the cheek, Aang with a warm hug, and then invites all of them to sit down and serves five-flavor soup as casually as if they stop by every other day for dinner.

It is not until after they have eaten, and Aang retreats to check on Appa, that Gran-Gran cocks one eyebrow at Katara. She waits.

Half a heartbeat passes, and Katara’s lip trembles. Then she throws herself forward with a wail and begins to sob into Gran-Gran’s parka.

Sokka stares, shocked. He moves forward to try to comfort his sister, but Gran-Gran shakes her head to stop him. “Nothing for a break-up like a good cry,” she says stoutly, stroking Katara’s hair. “Just let that out, sweetheart. There’s a girl.” Gran-Gran glares at Sokka over the top of Katara’s head, then looks pointedly at the door.

Scowling, Sokka strides out of the igloo into the thin, watered-down sunlight that passes for nighttime in the polar summer. He sits down in the snow outside Gran-Gran’s igloo, pulls out the shard of bone he’s been carving for a few weeks, and settles down to wait.

It is nearly an hour before Katara emerges from the igloo. Her eyes are rimmed with red and swollen, but she looks lighter, as though she has set down some heavy thing she has carried for miles and miles and miles.

“You gonna tell me what’s going on now?” Sokka demands, worry lending acid to his voice.

She rolls her eyes at him, but her small smile tells him that she doesn’t truly mean it. A quick twitch of Katara’s right hand builds a wide, low bench from the ice. She sits and pats the seat beside her. “Don’t be rude,” she says, utterly tranquil. Sokka grits his teeth. “All you had to do was ask.”

Sokka settles beside Katara on her icy bench. He considers, briefly, telling her that a bench made of ice is really not any more comfortable than sitting on the ground in the snow – then he discards the comment, and throws his arm around his sister’s shoulders, because she looks like she needs it. “So, tell me,” he commands. She smiles wanly.

“It just wasn’t right,” she says. Her frown gives premature wrinkles to her face; Sokka hates Aang for just a moment as he examines the shadows under Katara’s eyes. “I think we both knew it after a while – but we wanted to make it work so _badly_. I can’t think what went wrong, except maybe that it was wrong from the beginning.” Katara sighs, leans her head on Sokka’s shoulder. “We never fit each other, not really. We kept missing each other. Every time I wanted to go one way, he’d go the other – and I thought it was my job to just follow him. I couldn’t take it anymore.”

“D’you want me to break his nose for you?” Sokka asks very seriously, and only half discards the idea when Katara giggles. “He’s a monk, I could probably get in a few good hits before he went all glowy-eyes on me –”

“It’s not his fault,” Katara says firmly. Sokka wonders if she will ever stop protecting Aang. Sokka wonders if she realizes how silly it is that she is protecting Aang from her own heartbreak.

“He made you cry,” he insists.

“ _I_ made me cry,” Katara responds. He glares at her. She smiles wanly. “Okay, it was both of us, sort of. But it wasn’t his fault, Sokka. We were trying to make something impossible work. It’s bound to hurt a little when it breaks.”

Sokka could cheerfully kill the Avatar for putting this look on Katara’s face, this haunted, stricken look. But what Katara needs is comfort, so he presses his cheek to the top of her head. “Are you alright?”

She sighs. “I will be.”

Sokka supposes that has to be enough.

***

The Avatar leaves the South Pole on a clear, painfully bright morning, when the Southern sun sends beams fracturing off of the ice and the ocean churns appealingly in the distance.

Katara waves him off. She does not want to feel relieved at the sight of Appa disappearing over the horizon; she feels relieved anyway. She does not want tears to well up in her eyes as she realizes that _that_ path of her life is gone and dead and over; the tears well up anyway.

“I need another teacher to help me,” Pakku tells her. The families who have relocated from the North Pole have brought young waterbenders with them; and there are two toddlers, born into the Southern Tribe, who have shown the early signs of bending. Pakku _could_ teach them all by himself; but they will get a better education if Katara is there to help, and to guide the ones who have the talent to heal. The two of them work well together, anyway: Pakku is the strict, harsh male influence, the yang; Katara is his more fluid counterpart, the gentle yin.

The idea that she once again has a purpose soothes the spiky, discontented edges of her mind. She will settle back into life in the Southern Water Tribe, surrounded by new benders and new developments and old family. She will help rebuild her tribe. She will be happy here.

The village is larger now; the warriors have returned, and Southerners who previously eked out an existence in tiny fishing outposts and villages scattered across the pole have come to live with Katara’s people as tales of Hakoda’s wisdom and strength spread through the tribe. The tribespeople start to call their little village “Katilvik,” _place of gathering_ , and Katara’s home suddenly goes from a tiny fishing village to the center of Southern life.

The waterbenders from the North had wanted to turn the place into a grand city like the one at the North Pole, but Sokka and Hakoda had quickly vetoed that idea. The South Pole, they insisted, would remain _southern._ A few Northern waterbenders had been offended enough by that idea that they returned home; the waterbenders who stayed had assimilated quickly into the Southern tribe. Pakku and his students build igloos instead of houses, and instead of a palace there is a long, low gathering hut with wide tables, a large fire pit, and a meeting room where people can meet with Hakoda and the elders. Prayers and stories are carved into the walls, much like they are in the North; _that_ is a blending of the two cultures that Katara approves of. They are, by and large, one people.

Pakku and Katara take over a large, open space on the north side of the gathering hut and turn it into the waterbending school. Katara teaches Pakku’s students more advanced waterbending while Pakku plays with the toddlers; Katara finally realizes how badly he’s wanted children in all the years since Gran-Gran fled the North. Only two of the older waterbenders have any talent for healing; none of them, Katara thinks with relief, is strong enough to unlock the secret of bloodbending without instruction. She does not offer to teach them. She tells no one of its existence. Even Pakku would not understand. Even Gran-Gran would look at her in horror.

Her days pass serenely, peacefully, easily. For the most part.

Once, during a lesson, one of her students sends shards of ice streaking towards her face, and the sun catches them at just the right angle and lights the fragments up pale, deadly blue. Katara does not think; she only reacts. She seizes the water in the wells at her sides, the ice below her feet, the moisture in the air around her – and _yanks._ Ice flows up, traps her opponent’s legs in place and Katara sends a wall of icy daggers towards Azula –

Then Pakku is there, blocking her. Katara’s daggers shatter harmlessly against the shield Pakku pulls up between himself and Katara, and suddenly Katara is herself again and the person she was about to kill is not the mad Fire Nation princess, but a young waterbender with wide, panic-stricken eyes. Katara releases her hold on the water around her and presses her hands to her mouth. “I’m sorry,” she chokes out. “Spirits, Pakku, I –” Why is it suddenly so hard to breathe? Her head spins, and she bites down on her lower lip to keep from crying out. She nearly _killed_ someone, someone innocent and young and harmless –

All the things that Azula could’ve been, in a different life. All the things Katara has not been in a very long time.

“Breathe,” Pakku orders her.

Katara cannot hear him. The thundering of her heart and the choked floundering of her breathing dominate her ears, and in her fear, she sinks to the ground and bends herself into a ball of ice and waits for death to take her.

Sokka is waiting when Katara finally lets go of her hold on her little icy sanctuary – another child in an iceberg, another bender hiding from what they have done.

“Is –” she whispers hoarsely.

“Your student is fine,” Sokka says quietly. “You didn’t hurt him.” 

“Only because Pakku stopped me,” she says, and closes her eyes against the sickening lurch of self-hatred. And to think she had been worried about what they would think if they knew she was a bloodbender! But it hadn’t been the bloodbending that turned her into a monster.

“I wake up screaming sometimes,” Sokka tells her matter-of-factly. “I dream, all the time, about the invasion, and all those soldiers. Or the day of the comet, and how close I was to letting Toph fall. I still can’t stand when people walk up behind me too quickly. I can’t be around when people burn themselves.” He grimaces. “I can’t stand the smell.”

Katara looks away. She doesn’t want to hear this.

“You’re not weak because of the flashbacks,” he tells her. “You’re not evil because you react to stuff. You can’t help it.”

“The war is _over_ ,” she says harshly. “We have to let it go.”

Sokka sighs. “In some ways, the war will never be over,” he says gently. “Not for us.”

It is all too much. She leans her head against her brother’s parka and cries.

***

Katara knows in her bones, the way she always has, when summer begins to draw its endless day to a close and the approaching autumn equinox brings the promise of the first moon in months. It is then, in the time when the tribe began to draw closer together in preparation for the brutal cold of the coming winter, that a Fire Nation ship docks near the village.

Katara meets the ship with Sokka, both of them eager. Katara knows why _Sokka_ is eager – this ship will almost certainly bear a letter from Suki, who is still acting as Zuko’s primary bodyguard in the Caldera. They try to communicate as often as they can; but Hawky is not the most reliable bird on the planet, and Suki is busy. Katara knows that it’s been nearly half a year since they were able to see each other in person.

What Katara is unsure of is why she feels so excited. There will be no letter, no news on board this ship for her. Iroh, who sends them all frequent letters (and, every once in a while, packets of tea), sends all of his mail via messenger hawk from Ba Sing Se; he includes whatever note Toph dictates to him at the bottom of his letter, if she bothers to dictate anything at all. Aang sends word from the Southern Air Temple sporadically, but his letters are always carefully addressed to both Sokka _and_ Katara. Suki doesn’t correspond with Katara, except when she sends her affection and greeting through her letters to Sokka. Zuko has apparently forgotten how to write since the war ended; he has sent only two letters, both of them regarding international politics (although his second letter did include an anecdote about Iroh’s birthday).

But when the metal ramp extends down from the side of the ship and _thunks_ into the ice, the first person who walks towards them is wrapped in layers of green and wears white face paint.

“ _SUKI!”_ Sokka bellows, and scrambles over the ice to her where she is laughing and crying and flinging out her arms to meet him. Sokka picks her up and swings her around, yelling wordlessly. He kisses Suki, once, twice; then he turns to Katara, his eyes wild and obliviously joyful. “Katara! Suki’s here!”

Katara grins. “I hadn’t noticed,” she teases, then steps forward to give her future sister-in-law a hug. (Sokka has not asked Suki yet, Katara knows, but she _also_ knows that when he does, Suki plans on saying yes. Katara is not above prying, especially about her brother.)

“It’s good to see you,” Suki says warmly. Her eyes flit over Katara’s face, inspecting. Katara wonders what she sees there, with her gaze that is at once so sharp and so gentle. “You look good.”

“So do you,” Katara says, giving the other girl a light kiss on the cheek. “Sea travel agrees with you.”

“It didn’t until about a week ago,” Suki says wryly. “I was sick nearly the whole way. We stopped at Kyoshi Island for half a day, and after that I mostly had my sea legs under me.”

“I’ll take you out in the kayaks, it’s way better than a steamer,” Sokka promises her. He has already forgotten that Katara is there.

Suki laughs, a charming golden bell of sound. “Easy, Sokka! I have to greet your father first, and –” she pulls open her coat and digs a scroll out of a pocket – “give this to Katara.” Suki offers it to Katara with a smile.

“Me?” Katara asks, surprised. She’s not sure what anyone in the Fire Nation would be sending to _her._ Too curious to wait, she takes the scroll from Suki and unties it immediately.

It is a waterbending scroll, made from animal skin and ash-based ink. No, Katara realizes – it is _the_ waterbending scroll. It feels like a lifetime ago (or maybe two) that Zuko tied her to a tree and used her as bait. The memory nearly makes her snort with unwilling laughter, but instead she unfurls the scroll a bit farther and finds the note that’s tucked into the folds:

_I found this in a vault with a bunch of other things that had been ~~taken~~ stolen from the South Pole. I think it got left here after the comet, and somebody just threw it in with all of the other Water Tribe things. Everything else is on the ship to be returned to your people, but I wanted to make sure this got back to you – Z._

Katara traces the spiky letters with one finger. Her vision blurs, and she is surprised to realize that she is about to cry. Before she lets the tears fall, she shoves the scroll into her parka and turns her face towards the ship, where men in Fire Nation colors are already starting to unload boxes and crates filled with things that should have never left the South Pole.

They discover, as they unpack the boxes, that a good deal of it is just furs and skins and textiles, with a few bone carvings and weapons and fishhooks thrown in. Well-made and pretty, surely, but nothing special or irreplaceable. Still, Hakoda is clearly relieved to have a surplus of winter garments and hunting gear.

Some of it, though, makes the tribespeople mutter with anger as it’s unpacked from the boxes. Some of it is holy. After the Fire Nation sailors remove the first sacred mask from a box and set it uncaringly on the ground next to a pile of furs, Katara diplomatically suggests that the Fire Nation guests go find something to eat and allow the tribespeople to unpack the rest of the boxes. Things go more smoothly after that; anything that is sacred is handled with care and set aside in the gathering hut so that the spirits will not be offended. Once the desecrated mask is retrieved from the ground, incense is lit and prayers are said, asking the spirit represented by the mask not to take out its anger on the Tribe.

Katara is stunned by the sheer _volume_ of treasures that are returned to her people in one swift act. Pakku builds a small room on the south side of the gathering hut, so that they have a place to keep the sacred things. Katara bends ice into a graceful altar, and soon the masks and weapons and carvings with spiritual significance are carefully placed on the altar to please the spirits and bring blessings to the tribe.

She should be thrilled, watching her people’s treasures come home. But Katara is consumed with only one thought as she watches her people build their temple and keeps one hand on the Northern bending scroll tucked away in her coat.

The Southern Water Tribe remembers the ways to honor the spirits, and they remember the ways to hunt, and they remember the ways to build. The South Pole will stay southern, because her people remember these things. But there is no one left to remember the southern style of waterbending, no one at all; and there is no one to mourn the loss but her.

***

“Dad,” Katara asks Hakoda suddenly, as they sit together mending fishing nets, “do you remember the waterbenders? The old ones, the ones who were taken?”

Hakoda sets down the bone needle he is using to weave a torn net back together and looks at his daughter seriously. At seventeen, she looks more like Kya than he would have imagined possible. But the look in her eyes, the implacable determination – _that_ , he thinks wryly, she got directly from Kanna. “A little,” he answers. “I was very young when the raids were going on. By the time I was old enough to fight, there were no waterbenders left in our village.” He strokes a hand over her hair affectionately. “Not until you.”

“Did you ever see them? Their bending, I mean?”

Hakoda has watched his daughter teaching Northern style waterbending to Southern children and wondered how long it would be before she asked this question. “Not very closely,” he says gently, hoping to take the sting from her disappointment. He had been no more than a boy when the last waterbender was taken from the village. He remembers the terror he felt, when Katara was no more than four years old and the ice around her cracked when she cried. The horror when he realized that the Fire Nation would be coming back for his girl. The sorrow when he realized that she would, in some ways, be alone for the rest of her life.

Katara scowls, and mutters something that is _distinctly_ unladylike. Hakoda chokes back a laugh. “Nobody remembers enough of the waterbenders to be able to show me anything,” she says flatly. “I tried asking the elders, and Barloq laughed at me and said that I had a lot to learn if I thought that the waterbenders were the center of the tribe, then or now.”

Hakoda winces. “You didn’t do anything rash, did you?” he asks. Katara has her mother’s temper. It will be awkward in council meetings if she froze Barloq to a wall.

She sniffs. “I thought about it, but no. Just because he was rude doesn’t mean I have to be.” Hakoda can hardly blame her for that. He’d be tempted to freeze the bad-tempered elder to a wall himself, if he had the power.

“I wish there was someone left,” Hakoda mutters, eyebrows drawing together in consternation. “Someone to teach you _our_ ways.”

She flinches suddenly, goes pale. Hakoda wonders at her reaction as Katara looks steadily down at the net in her hands. “Yeah,” she whispers. “Me too.”

“What about that scroll Zuko sent you?”

She shakes her head. “It’s from the North. It won’t help me learn the Southern style.”

Hakoda mirrors her frown. “I’m sorry, Katara,” he says seriously. “I wish this was something we could recover.”

She sighs, and her eyes hold an ocean of heartbreak, far too ancient and vast for such a young face. “Me too, Dad,” she says quietly. “I don’t know what to do.”

Hakoda puts his arm around her shoulders, and his daughter leans against his side. “Well, for starters, you write to the Fire Lord and tell him the tribe appreciates that he sent our relics back to us,” Hakoda says. “And then you stay hopeful. Maybe the answer is out there, we just haven’t found it yet.”

Katara gives him a smile which does not quite reach her eyes. “You sound like Aang,” she says lightly.

Hakoda chuckles, and together they take up the nets and begin to work in sync. “Perhaps I’m getting wise in my old age,” he teases her.

“That can’t be it,” she laughs. “You’d have to be old for that.”

Hakoda looks at his daughter and thinks that if he feels older than his years, he is not the only one.

***

When the Fire Nation ship leaves the icy harbor to make the trek back to the Caldera, it leaves Suki behind and takes a letter from Katara with it. Suki tells Katara privately that she means to stay permanently; she has been training a few other Kyoshi warriors to take her place as Zuko’s bodyguard. “And I’m tired of waiting for Sokka to ask me to stay,” she adds with a roll of her eyes. Katara hides a smile behind her hands and makes a mental note to make sure that they set aside some extra parkas in Suki’s size. Suki is a warrior – but South Pole winters are bafflingly cold, and nobody is _that_ tough.

They make room for Suki in the family igloo; she sleeps with Katara for warmth’s sake, for now (since Sokka, annoyingly, has yet to propose). The igloo, which has never been more than cozy, quickly becomes cramped with six adults sharing the space. Katara starts stretching the ice, subtly bending the walls a little taller and wider; if anyone notices, they don’t say anything.

It is only a few weeks after the Fire Nation steamer leaves Katilvik with Katara’s letter that Zuko’s reply comes by messenger hawk. It’s short, again, merely thanking Katara for her letter and sending his wishes for continued good relations between the South and the Fire Nation. But at the bottom, he writes –

_You shouldn’t thank me for sending all those things back to your people. You don’t need to thank me for doing the bare minimum that I can do to make up for the crimes my people have committed. I only wish there was more I can do._

_Uncle visited recently, and he sends his fond regards and says to thank you for sending him that tapestry for his tea shop. He hung it in a place of honor, apparently, and wants you to visit him soon so you can see it. He scolded me for not writing to you more often…it’s been a busy few years, I guess. I haven’t written to any of my friends much. But I’m trying to be better about keeping in touch. Uncle says that it’s important for us “young people” to maintain our friendships, because it will increase harmony between the nations. And he says that it’s important to draw wisdom from many sources – “you should ask your friends for help more often! It is frequently the people around us who cast light on the things we cannot see for ourselves.” At least that’s what I think he said. It was a bit longer than that (you know how Uncle gets when he starts feeling philosophical)._

_Yours – Z._

Katara is nearly as surprised by the letter itself as she is by its contents. She’s known that Zuko was busy – he was running an entire nation, after all – so it hadn’t hurt her feelings that his letters had been perfunctory and rare. _This_ missive isn’t that much longer than the previous ones, but she can feel Zuko in it. Katara can nearly hear his voice narrating the words, see him frowning over the parchment as he writes in quick, jerky movements. She’s surprised at how much the mental image makes her miss him.

But one phrase in Zuko’s letter starts Katara’s brain ticking, and it’s only a few days later that she sends the messenger hawk winging away from the South Pole, burdened with notes to her friends all over the world that ask one burning question:

_What do you know about Southern style waterbending?_

***

Aang writes: _I meditated on this for days, but that isn’t the kind of knowledge that I can get from my past lives. I’m sorry, Katara…maybe Bumi remembers something about the old waterbenders?_

***

Teo writes: _Can you adapt the Northern style somehow? It’s terrible that the Southern style is lost, but maybe you can build a new kind of style. It’s still Southern if it’s created by a Southern waterbender, right?_

***

Gran-Gran says: “I never tried to learn about waterbending, I’m afraid. They wouldn’t let girls watch the masters practice in the North, and I only had reason to go the healing huts a few times. So, when I came to the South, it was so ingrained that waterbending was not for me that I never really paid much attention to it. I’m sorry, Katara.”

***

Haru writes: _My father said that even when he was a young boy, no one knew very much about the Southern Water Tribe outside of when they came to the southern part of the Earth Kingdom to trade. Most contact was with merchants and hunters, not with waterbenders, unfortunately. He said that he remembers the tribespeople really liking the far parts of the sea, though – the parts where the water is deep and dark, and the currents are strong._

***

Pakku says: “Many things were lost during the war, Katara. Your style of bending is not perfectly Northern; perhaps that will have to be enough.”

***

Sokka says, hesitantly: “Well – did you learn anything from Hama, besides…?” He drops the subject when he meets Katara’s eyes, and they do not speak of it again.

***

Iroh writes: _It is a most worthwhile endeavor to recover this part of your culture, Master Katara. My heart is heavy that this was ever lost to you in the first place. I do not know much of the Southern style of waterbending, for my duties in the war were far from the South Pole and I did not venture near the Southern waterbenders often. It is possible that the prison logs or the captains’ journals from the time when the waterbenders were captured may hold some information about the waterbenders. But if you choose to seek knowledge from these places, carry my warning with you – any information you find is likely to be very painful for you. While an honorable soldier always respects his adversaries, it is the unfortunate truth that many Fire Nation soldiers were not honorable during the war. I wish I could be of more help to you, my dear._

At the bottom, there is a note from Toph in Iroh’s handwriting: _Same thing I told Sparky when his firebending was broken, Sweetness: go to the original source._

Katara nearly laughs out loud imagining Iroh’s pained expression as Toph insists that he transcribes her words exactly. There is a smudged thumbprint at the bottom of the parchment which passes for Toph’s signature, and a small postscript:

_Tell Sokka and Suki hi for me._

Katara balls up the parchment and throws it at the wall of the igloo, frowning fiercely. The irony does not escape her that when Toph had given Zuko this advice, it had been just as redundant: the dragons were the original firebenders, and they were extinct. The moon is the original waterbender, and Yue hasn’t been incredibly talkative for the last several years. (The mean-spirited thought makes Katara wince, and she whispers a quick prayer to the young moon spirit in apology. She doubts Yue will hold it against her, though – they’ve always gotten along rather well.)

Her next letter to Zuko is long, detailing the excellent progress of her students and the laborious preparations for winter before she finally turns to the problem which has been eating at her.

_It’s not like there’s an abandoned Sun Warrior civilization that I can go explore, you know? Our legends say that the first waterbenders saw the way that the moon pushed and pulled the tides and learned to do it themselves. How does that help me find the origin of the Southern style? I’m starting to think that I won’t be able to do this._

His reply comes so swiftly that the messenger hawk beats the first early-winter blizzard; swiftly enough, Katara realizes, that he must have sent this reply as soon as he received her letter.

 _That doesn’t sound like the Katara I know_ , Zuko writes. _You’ve never been someone who gives up without a fight; don’t start now. If the only place you can learn about the beginnings of waterbending is in your legends, then maybe you should explore more of the old stories. Maybe they can guide you._

 _When did you get wise? _she teases him in her reply (which she sends as soon as the blizzard passes and it’s safe to send the messenger hawk out again). _That must be Iroh’s influence. I took your advice, though, and I spent the first winter storm asking the elders to repeat all the old stories. They were more than happy to comply – it’s normal for us to sit together in one igloo during the storms and play games and tell stories to pass the time. It probably was the first time they’ve ever seen someone taking notes, though._

 _You’d like the winters here,_ he replies. _It’s the coldest part of the year, but it’s still pretty warm. We get winter thunderstorms that can flood whole villages, sometimes. It’s beautiful, in a chaotic sort of way. When I was younger, my mother and I would sit in the outdoor pavilions and watch the rain in the gardens, and she would tell me stories about how Chesa, the storm spirit, was grieving the death of his human lover Tizu. His anger made the lightning, and his tears made the rain, and his mourning songs made the wind. But when the storm had passed, Tizu would send flowers from the land of the dead to bloom for Chesa, so that Chesa would know that Tizu loved him still._

It begins an exchange of stories: Katara tells him, in between descriptions of the latest hunt and how Sokka is beginning to teach Earth-style sword fighting to the other warriors, of Viya the seal-woman, who put aside her sealskin and her ability to dance under the waves to teach the tribespeople how to fish in the icy waters of the South Pole, and how she stayed with them to protect them against Koro, the mischievous wind spirit who liked to lure people away from their igloos during the winter storms to leave them to wander in the dark and the cold forever.

Zuko responds with a story of the Painted Lady, and how she swore to protect a small fishing village after a fisherman saved her when she was tangled in his nets.

 _I know that one!_ Katara replies. _I was her for a few days, actually – I mean, sort of. That village was overrun with soldiers, and (long story short) I ended up blowing up a factory and chasing out the Fire Nation. Well, I say I did it – Aang helped._

 _That was you?_ he writes back. _The governor of that province has had a bounty out for the last several years, for “terroristic actions and blasphemous impersonation of spirits.” He’s an insufferable jackass, though, and that factory did need to be shut down – so your secret is safe with me._

The winter passes like this; as the South Pole is blanketed in the endless polar night, Katara fills her time with teaching her students and badgering the elders to tell her the old tales over and over again. And between lessons and legends, Katara writes to Zuko, and carefully does not think about what it means that she is giddy with excitement whenever a messenger hawk comes to her bearing a scroll with a red wax seal.

***

The endless night has begun to soften into the gray of perpetual dawn as winter fades into spring, and his sister is restless.

It is early in the morning (though ‘morning’ is a loose term this time of year) when Sokka finds Katara far out on the ice shelves, so close to the sea that he is surprised her boots are dry. She is going through her bending forms, and the sea rises up to meet her and crashes away from her in a rhythm that seems to call to the very core of his being. Sokka is not a bender; but he is Water Tribe, and his soul is sculpted from saltwater and ice.

“You’re up early,” Sokka says quietly as he approaches. Katara has not looked at him, but he knows that she’s aware of his presence. He learned long ago that it is impossible to sneak up on Katara when she is standing on ice.

“Couldn’t sleep,” she says shortly. She makes a punching motion that sends a sharp whip of water hurtling forward, then she pulls back and kicks upward. The water follows her foot, spraying up into a geyser, then crashing back down into the sea as she returns to a neutral position.

“Was that a firebending move?” Sokka asks, curious.

“I learned it from Zuko,” she says. Her eyes are oddly bitter. She makes a fist and brings it sharply upwards; ice punches up from the surface of the glacier, makes a flat surface about knee-height. Katara collapses onto it and props her hand on her fist. “That one I learned from Toph,” she says. Her voice is gloomy.

“Are we mad at Zuko and Toph for some reason?” Sokka is not too proud to admit when he is beaten – nor when he is utterly lost, and right now he has no clue what is going on. But if _Katara_ is mad at someone, then _Sokka_ is mad at that someone, too.

“No!” Katara bursts out. “I’m mad at – at –”

“At who?” he asks, bewildered. Now he’s _really_ lost.

“No one!” she shouts, jumping to her feet. Water crashes angrily against the ice shelf. “I’m just _mad_! I am the only waterbender on the planet who doesn’t bend like a waterbender! Nobody else bends like I do! It’s just me, Sokka. There is no Southern bending style, and there are no Southern benders. It’s just me, and half of my bending moves are borrowed from the other nations.”

Sokka sinks down onto Katara’s makeshift ice stool and pats the space next to him. She crosses her arms over her chest and glares at him. He only pats the ice again. She sits with a huffy sigh.

“Are you going to tell me what happened, or do I need to go get my beard?” he asks.

Katara rolls her eyes. “ _Please_ do not bring that beard back,” she mutters.

“Alright, so talk to me,” he says, with aplomb.

“I’ve been collecting the old stories,” she says finally. “From the elders. Trying to find anything about how the old Southern masters created our bending style.”

“And?” Sokka prompts, when she doesn’t seem inclined to continue.

“And I’ve hit a dead end. ‘The old writings and carvings are lost, Master Katara,’” Katara drones in an admirable impression of Elder Barloq. “‘We must move forward. We cannot afford to waste our time mourning the past.’”

“They don’t remember anything else?”

Katara shakes her head. “There were some old stories that mostly got passed down through the waterbenders,” she says. “Things that mattered to benders, that wouldn’t matter to the rest of the tribe. But the elders don’t remember those, because they aren’t benders. So, the legends that might actually help me recreate the Southern bending style…” she trails off.

“Are the only ones that don’t get told anymore,” Sokka finishes for her.

Katara nods. Her eyes, forlorn and tired, turn towards the horizon. “I’m never going to recover the Southern bending style,” she whispers. “It’s just _lost_ , Sokka.”

“Are you _sure_?” he asks, gripping her arm. “ _Really_ sure? Maybe the North –”

“No,” she says harshly, then sighs and rubs a mittened hand over her face. “Zuko said –”

Sokka frowns, his brows knitting together in confusion. “‘ _Zuko_ said?’”

Katara gives him _a look._ “Iroh had mentioned that there might be _something_ about the Southern waterbenders in prison logs, or captains’ journals. And then Zuko said that those things would be in the Royal Library, and that if there was anything about Southern Water Tribe legends, _that_ would be in the Royal Library, too. And if I ever wanted to come explore the library, or anything…” she trails off.

“Okay, and you’re not already heading for the Caldera because…?”

Katara looks at him with eyes full of fear and pain. She has not looked at him like that in years, and he hates it, hates it, hates it. “What if there’s nothing there?” Katara whispers.

“What if there is?” Sokka challenges her. He would say anything to get the characteristic determination back into his sister’s eyes. It is only a bonus that he believes in what he’s saying, too. “What if there _is_ something there, Katara? Are you going to be able to live with yourself if you just stay here and wonder? Because –” he catches her chin in his fingers and tilts her head up, forcing her to meet his eyes – “because if you’re right, and there’s nothing there, then at least you tried. And then you _know._ You’re building a _new_ heritage for the South Pole, Katara. The old bending style is gone. We can’t bring it back, not perfectly. But if you don’t do _everything_ you can to try to honor the customs of our ancestors…you’re never going to be happy with what you come up with.”

She sighs, heavy as ten thousand mountains and deep as ten thousand seas.

The next morning, a messenger hawk leaves the South Pole, bearing only a short message –

_I hope you meant the invitation seriously. See you before the spring equinox – K._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> About the world-building in this chapter:
> 
> The Southern Water Tribe's culture and way of life in this fic is built out of a combination of 1) ATLA canon; 2) other Zutara fics that gave me inspiration; 3) my own imagination; and 4) a VERY LIGHT sprinkling of Inuit culture. The influence of Inuit culture on this fic (as in, the amount of research that I, personally, did to add to this fic) is VERY minimal. (Inuit culture is IMMENSE, y'all, and I really only was trying to make sure I didn't make a mess of anything.)
> 
> "Katilvik" is an Inuktitut word, meaning "meeting or gathering place." (Translation from https://www.katilvik.com/glossary/). It is the only thing I borrowed directly from Inuit culture. The story that Katara tells Zuko about "Viya the seal-woman" is inspired VERY loosely by an Inuit legend. Other than these two things, anything that resembles Inuit culture is either accidental or came to be through ATLA canon/fanon. The "legends" in this chapter are made up by yours truly.
> 
> All of that being said, I'm not here to misuse anyone's culture or offend anybody, and if I did it's just out of ignorance. And! Ignorance can and should be cured. If you are Inuit or more knowledgeable than I am (not that that's hard) and would like me to change something/deal with something more respectfully, PLEASE message me. I am totally open to learning, and I know that ATLA did not perfectly represent the cultures that it took inspiration from. 
> 
> Feedback is always appreciated as I am always striving to do better (both writing- and representation-wise).
> 
> Love you all, your feedback on the last chapters is what kept me going on this fic. Ty <3


	4. Fuse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katara arrives in the Fire Nation to the realization that nothing is the same as it was three years ago, and finding one interactive map in a spirit library one time does not make you an expert at research.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for slow updates: I'm studying for my licensing exams, and writing this is my self-indulgent break time. I appreciate y'all sticking with me, though.
> 
> I'm drunkhemingway on tumblr, come chat with me!
> 
> TW on this chapter for a very light insinuation towards sexual violence towards the end of the chapter.
> 
> Also: I lied to you. I’m a dirty lying liar who lies. This isn’t going to be 10 chapters. It’s probably going to be longer, because I started chapter five and thought “wow, no way do I hit the halfway mark of this story by the end of this chapter.” This wasn’t supposed to be a slow burn! I was writing a simple zutara-week-inspired fic, or so I thought. But the story had different ideas. Hang in there with me, friends. Thanks, as always, for reading!

For some reason, he didn’t expect to be nervous. His heart had leapt in his chest whenever he opened a letter to see her careful penmanship, but he had not expected to be nervous to see her again in person. It seems, somehow, that there has been a part of Katara that has been hovering just over his shoulder since he opened the first letter from her, all those months ago. So he should not be nervous.

But that doesn’t stop Fire Lord Zuko, son of Ursa, adopted son of Iroh, the Peace-bringer, from wiping his sweaty hands on his robes every few minutes as he and his entourage wait for the Water Tribe ship to make port.

“My lord, may I be so bold as to once more point out that it may be more comfortable for your lordship to await the arrival of your guests at the palace,” murmurs Zuko’s chief manservant from just behind his left shoulder.

Zuko closes his eyes and prays for patience. “You’ve pointed it out, Sazeh,” he growls. “Now leave it. Master Katara is a foreign dignitary and a hero of the war. She deserves the highest honors the Fire Nation can give her.”

“It just looks rather odd, my lord,” Sazeh says, unfazed. “The Fire Lord waiting in the sun for a Water Tribe peasant –” he smiles pleasantly as Zuko casts a stormy glare over his shoulder – “even if that peasant is a war hero. No one expects those ‘highest honors’ to include the Fire Lord himself waiting on Master Katara hand and foot.”

Zuko grits his teeth. “ _Enough_ ,” he says. “I’m the Fire Lord, aren’t I? And if I say Master Katara deserves a personal welcome from the Fire Lord, then she deserves a personal welcome from the Fire Lord.”

“Of course, Lord Zuko,” Sazeh says, shying away from the conflict with perfect timing and grace. Zuko grinds his teeth a bit harder; Sazeh is too experienced in courtly manners to ever give Zuko any _real_ reason to complain about his behavior. The manservant annoys Zuko endlessly, of course; but Zuko can’t actually fire him for that, not without offending half a dozen highly placed servants and nobles and spirits only know what else. For all he had felt trapped when he was banished, Zuko has never been less free to do as he wishes than he is now that he wears the Fire Lord’s hairpiece.

He forces himself not to fidget as he watches people, dressed in blue, trim lines, coil ropes, secure sails, and finally, _finally_ roll out the wooden gangplank. People start to emerge – sailors, warriors, men he does not know, faces he cannot be bothered to try to recognize. Zuko lets out an impatient huff. Sazeh clears his throat pointedly.

At last, a familiar slender figure emerges from belowdecks and descends to the dock. There is a bag slung over her shoulder, and her hair is loose. Zuko feels his breath catch in his throat as he watches Katara turn towards him. He’d forgotten how _graceful_ she is, how every motion is smooth and fluid. She spots him, breaks out in a wide grin, and runs to meet him.

“Zuko!” Katara cries, and throws her arms around him.

The enthusiastic hug takes him by surprise, and he is half a second too late in returning it. “Um. Hi, Katara,” he says, his voice raspy from nerves.

He knows he’s made her feel awkward when there is a slight blush mantling her cheekbones when she pulls back. She smiles up at him anyway, and says, “ _Spirits,_ it’s good to see you. Your hair is so long – I like it! And you look…” her head tilts to one side, and her smile turns to a smirk. She tugs on a tendril of his nearly-shoulder-length hair. Sazeh nearly chokes. “Regal,” Katara decides. “You look regal. Dignified.”

“Only because they won’t let me out of the palace in my pajamas,” Zuko says, deadpan, and is rewarded by her quick snort of laughter. He is surprised he can speak; it feels as though his tongue is stuck to the roof of his mouth.

Katara has always been pretty, with her long dark hair and her flawless, dusky complexion and her kind eyes framed by dark, dense lashes. The last time he saw her in person, she had been fourteen, and she had had the delicate prettiness of girlhood, more potential than true beauty, with the softness of childhood still hanging on. That prettiness has sharpened, intensified into the curves and angles of young womanhood. The girl standing before him has a lusher figure than the Katara of his memory; her mouth is fuller, the angles of her face more defined. Has her hair always been so thick and wild? Have her eyes always been so _blue_?

 _Pretty_ no longer describes Katara adequately.

Zuko is well aware that if Katara had even the slightest clue what he is thinking, she would freeze his feet to the dock and leave him there until high tide. Still, he cannot help but think, just as he thought all those months ago when he heard from Ty Lee (who heard it from Suki, who got the news from Sokka) that Aang and Katara had broken up – the Avatar is an _idiot_ for letting Katara get away.

But he’d rather Katara not know that he was thinking _that_ , either, so what Zuko says is: “You look tired.”

She smiles sheepishly. “I spent the last week of the voyage calming the waters around our ship. We hit a few bad currents that were going to slow us down, and I _really_ hate rationing drinking water. I probably overextended a little bit.”

Behind Zuko, Sazeh clears his throat again – _loudly_. Zuko sighs. “May I escort you to the palace, Master Katara?”

Her lips twitch. “I’d be honored, Fire Lord Zuko,” she says loftily, her eyes dancing. “Just let me tell the warriors where they can find me.”

“If I may be so bold, Master Katara,” Sazeh drones, stepping forward with a bow. “Please, allow the servants of the Fire Lord to perform this chore for you. We will ensure that your people know your whereabouts. If you and your retinue are ready to depart, we can escort you to the comforts of the palace immediately. There is no reason for an –” Sazeh flicks a glance at Zuko “– honored guest of the Fire Lord to remain out on the docks in the sun and the heat.”

“No retinue,” Katara says cheerfully. “It’s just me.”

Derision wafts off Sazeh like too-strong perfume. Zuko pinches the bridge of his nose between his fingers.

“In that case, the servants of the Fire Lord will be more than happy to attend to your needs,” Sazeh says smoothly. He snaps his fingers, and one of the numerous people who follow Zuko around all day steps forward to take Katara’s bags. Sazeh bows again and backs away towards the waiting palanquin.

Zuko offers Katara his arm. “Sorry about him,” he whispers. “Sazeh means well, but he’s kind of a snob.”

Katara chokes out a laugh. “You know, I sort of noticed. Who is he?” Casually, she slips her hand into the crook of his elbow and falls into step with him.

“The head of my household,” Zuko tells her. “Chief manservant, master of my schedule, and a half-dozen other titles I can never remember. He keeps me appropriately regal.”

“Isn’t one of the perks of being Fire Lord that people don’t get to tell you what to do?”

“Do me a favor,” Zuko says dryly, helping Katara into the palanquin. “Mention that to Sazeh sometime.”

She laughs again and settles back into the curved wooden back of the seat, her hands in her lap. She’s dressed in Water Tribe colors, he notices, but her blue tunic has short sleeves and is slit high on each thigh, exposing trim legs covered by thin leggings. Her forearms are covered by arm wraps, and her mother’s necklace sits in its customary place at the hollow of her throat. Purple embroidery dances along the hems of her clothing, replacing the usual fur trim. Her eyes are bright with excitement as she gazes out of the window at the passing streets.

“It hasn’t changed that much since the last time you were here,” Zuko points out.

She grins at him. “It’s been nearly four years and you want me to believe the Caldera hasn’t changed? Besides, this is the first I’ve traveled at all in months. It’s nice to see new things again. I was starting to get a little itchy.”

“I know the feeling,” Zuko says ruefully.

She gives him a sympathetic glance. “Bored, Lord Zuko?”

“Restless,” he tells her, unbearably honest for just a moment. "But it’s part of the job, I guess. How are you? The South Pole? Sokka? Suki?”

She tilts her head to one side, and he can see that his attempt to distract her has failed. But she takes pity on him, and answers anyway. “The South is growing. It’s not just a fishing village anymore…some days I felt like I barely recognized it. You know that we started a waterbending school, and there’s a temple now. Sokka is good – he’s been so giddy since Suki decided to stay at the South Pole that I was constantly surprised he didn’t spontaneously start doing cartwheels. Suki is happy to be there. We’re all just surprised Sokka hasn’t proposed yet.”

“Still?” Zuko asks. “I would’ve thought he’d ask before she even got all the way off the ship.”

Katara grins. “He’s ‘waiting for the right time,’ whatever that means. I’m pretty sure he was just making sure she knows what a South Pole winter is like before she agrees to move there. Although…” she taps her chin thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t be shocked if Suki just proposed herself at this rate. She’s getting pretty impatient with him.”

Zuko feels his lips curl in amusement, remembering Sokka that last summer on Ember Island and his obvious adoration. “It’s not beyond imagining that she just challenges him to a fight, in my opinion. Loser has to propose.”

She snorts. “Either way, I’m hopeful that we’ll all be headed south for a wedding before too long.”

“All?” Zuko asks stupidly. “Would they want us all there?”

Katara frowns at him. “Don’t be silly,” she reprimands. “You’re a part of the family, and Sokka will want the whole family there – you, Aang, Toph, everybody. And since Sokka is the most likely candidate for the next Chief after our dad, you can probably call it a visit of state or something.” Her stern countenance melts into a grin. “So that your babysitter will let you leave.”

“Sazeh is _not_ my babysitter,” Zuko insists with a flush, but returns her smile. “I hope they have it at a time when I can go.”

“Don’t worry,” Katara says brightly. “If you’re too busy being Fire Lord, we’ll just stuff some pillows in your bed, say you’re sick, and I’ll sneak you out of the Caldera.”

“You can’t _sneak_ the Fire Lord out of the Caldera.”

“Why not? I snuck him _into_ it, if you’ll recall.”

“ _Snuck_? Katara, we came crashing in during the middle of Sozin’s comet on the back of a ten-ton flying bison.”

“And Azula was very surprised to see us,” she says, unruffled. “Ergo, we snuck.”

Zuko lets out a crack of surprised laughter. “Alright, fine, you’re a master of stealth,” he surrenders.

Katara’s smile fades, and she bites her lower lip. “Is she still…”

Zuko casts an unseeing glare out the window. His heart twists painfully in his chest at the thought of Azula.

“Sorry,” Katara says quickly. “We don’t have to talk about it.”

“It’s just her and the chi blockers and the healers, on a small island to the west,” Zuko says quietly. “She’s not…as unstable as she used to be, but she’s not always…all _there_. They tell me she’s making progress, but she may never fully recover. May never be the same. She apparently doesn’t speak much these days.”

“But that’s better,” Katara says compassionately, laying a hand on his wrist. “You’re doing everything you can for her. And she _is_ getting better.”

He tries to smile at her. At the sight of Katara’s wide blue eyes, filled with sympathy, he wants to tell her how he still wakes up at night, drenched in sweat, with Azula’s screaming sobs echoing in his ears; how he doubts his decision, every day, to exile her to that rocky, nameless little island. He wants to tell her the truth – that he sent Azula to the world’s most comfortable prison with servants and companions and healers to try to mend her broken mind so that he wouldn’t ever have to face the fractured girl that is all that remains of his sister. He wants to tell her that he is not helping Azula because of familial loyalty; he wants to tell her that he is a coward. He wants to tell her that he is ashamed.

Zuko thinks she would understand.

It is, perhaps, _because_ Katara would understand that Zuko does not tell her these things. He cannot bear to listen to one more person insist that he is doing the right thing. He merely shrugs again, and once more gracelessly changes the subject. “How is Aang?” Then he kicks himself. Katara has not mentioned Aang or their breakup to him at all in their letters. Despite Ty Lee’s reports that the split was amicable, Katara could have been crying herself to sleep every night for all Zuko knows.

But Katara’s face holds no sign of distress. In fact, she smiles fondly – an expression Zuko remembers her wearing as she watched Aang practice his bending in those days before the comet. When things were still simple, and good.

“The new acolytes he’s trained have all adopted the Air Nomad way of life,” she says. “In the old days, only airbenders were monks – but with so few Air Nomads left, Aang says that it’s important to open up the temples to non-benders. And they used to be segregated by gender, too – female benders and children lived in two of the temples, male benders lived in the others, and all the non-bending Air Nomads just…”

“Were nomadic?” Zuko supplies.

She flashes him a smile. “Exactly. So Aang figures that this group we found was a group of nomads that survived the –” she stops. “Um. Well.”

“I know what we’re responsible for,” Zuko says staunchly. “You don’t have to dance around it.”

“What your _grandfather_ was responsible for,” Katara says, her brows furrowing.

 _My family, my sin._ He shrugs, and moves on. “Does Aang think that there’s a possibility that these nomads might have bender children?”

“He actually thinks they already have,” Katara says brightly. He doesn’t remember her being so easily distracted – ah, but there is a sharp look in her eye as she watches his face. She is distracted from nothing. Zuko is grateful that she allows him to change the subject anyway. “I guess there’s been a few very young kids that have shown early signs of airbending. Nothing definite yet, but he should know within a year or two.”

“It seems like a long shot, to hope that there’s enough Air Nomad blood left in these wanderers that they would have an airbending child, if one hasn’t been born in a century.”

“Airbending is apparently harder to spot in children, if you don’t know what you’re looking for. It’s easier to notice if your child is a firebender, or earthbender – the signs are more obvious. But are you really going to notice that much if the wind picks up a bit when your toddler cries?”

“I guess not.”

“Exactly. That’s why the monks were the most spiritual and the least worldly of all the benders. Airbending is much more subtle than other types of bending, and it requires _much_ greater connection with your element to truly master it.”

“So you’re telling me that Aang might not have been the last airbender? There might have been others, and –”

“And we never knew,” Katara confirms. “It’s not likely that there were any particularly _powerful_ airbenders born in the last century. No one with enough power to do more than move a few breezes – otherwise the Fire Nation would have noticed, or we would have heard rumors during the war. But the bloodline hasn’t died.”

Zuko sits back and rubs a hand over his mouth. “The airbenders aren’t gone,” he says, wonderingly.

Katara leans over and grasps his hand for a moment. She seems to understand exactly what this news means to Zuko. Then she leans back. He clenches his hand, holding on to the slight feeling of pressure where her hand had been just a moment before. “Of course,” she says thoughtfully, “we did still blow up the Western Air Temple.”

“If you want to be _very_ technical about it, Sokka blew up the Western Air Temple.”

“Oh? Who was it that sent Combustion Man after us? Remind me.”

“That wasn’t his name,” Zuko grumbles. Katara laughs.

“It’s really good to see you, Zuko,” she says sincerely. “Really. I’ve missed you.”

He opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again.

The palanquin stops. _Oh, thank Agni._

“Uh. We’re here,” he says stupidly.

Katara draws back a little. A small blush is burning in her cheeks. He has embarrassed her again, and he’s not entirely sure _how_ he managed that. To give himself time to formulate his next words, Zuko hops out of the palanquin and holds his hand out to help Katara down. She smiles at him uncertainly before placing her hand in his – but it is merely a gesture; not an ounce of her weight rests on him as she descends from the palanquin, so self-possessed and easy that she nearly appears to be floating.

Clearly, she does not _need_ anyone’s assistance _._ But, Zuko notes, she won’t embarrass him by spurning his outstretched hand. He wonders how long it has been since Katara found any task she truly couldn’t do alone.

“It looks bigger than I remember,” she observes, looking up at the palace.

“To be fair, there was a bunch of fire in front of it last time,” Zuko says, scratching at his head. Sazeh glares from his position at the head of the palanquin. Zuko sighs. “ _Master_ Katara, please allow my servants to show you around the palace, as I assume I do not have time to escort you myself –” he darts a glance at Sazeh, who nods nearly imperceptibly. “I will, however, see you at dinner, if that’s acceptable to you. If there is _anything_ you need, ask. You’re a guest of honor in this palace. Nothing is too good for you while you’re here.”

She smiles at him, but her eyes are uncertain at his suddenly formal tone. “I’ll see you later?”

Zuko can’t help himself, even though Sazeh will exude disapproval for the next three days over it. He pulls a signet ring off his pinky finger and hands it to Katara. “Absolutely,” he confirms. “I usually eat in the private royal dining room – you can join me there, around the seventh evening bell or so? Just tell one of my household servants to show you the way. And, in the meantime, if you need me, show this ring to any servant or guard and they’ll take you to me.”

“Seventh evening bell, private royal dining room,” she repeats, sliding the signet ring into her pocket. “Got it.”

“I have to go,” he says regretfully. “Sazeh is already ready to fillet me for taking the time to meet you on the docks.”

“Go,” Katara laughs, pushing at his shoulder. “We’ll talk more over dinner.”

He turns to leave, because there is nothing else for him to do. But Zuko thinks, as he leaves his friend standing on the steps to the Fire Lord’s palace in her blue tunic and surrounded by his guards and servants, that she looks a little lost, and smaller than he remembers.

***

 _Make yourself at home, Katara,_ she thinks to herself in bafflement. _You’re a guest of honor, Katara. Just ask for anything you need, Katara._ Zuko hadn’t been kidding. It seems to be the singular mission of the Fire Lord’s staff to provide for any need, desire, or whim a guest might have – and Katara is ready to scream.

So far, Katara has shooed away two young maids who brought her water for a bath, one girl who wanted to help her wash her hair, a laundress who offered to press and steam her clothes (who offers to steam _anything_ for a _waterbender_?), another woman who tried to unpack her bags, and a girl who shyly insisted she was to help Katara dress – and it has only been two hours.

Once she manages to convince the maids that she can bathe and wash her hair on her own, Katara slips into the bathroom and sinks into the scented bathwater, reveling in the first bit of silence and privacy she has had in weeks. The apartments that she is to stay in are decorated in elegant blues and purples, and are more luxurious than any place she has ever stayed, even the house in Ba Sing Se. (This suite has apparently been set aside specifically for Water Tribe diplomats. Katara is endlessly amused at the idea that she is considered a diplomat.)

Once she’s rinsed the several weeks’ worth of saltwater and sweat from her skin and hair, Katara rises to find that Zuko’s servants have left her a wide array of perfumed lotions and oils in delicate glass bottles, laid out on a counter next to a silky purple bathing robe. Katara peeks around the door to make sure she’s truly alone in the apartment, then grins to herself in delight. _This_ she could get used to.

She finds a scent that she likes – one that is simple, and a little spicy – and spoils herself. Then she binds her hair back, dresses in her lightest leggings and overdress (she’s forgotten, to her surprise, how _hot_ it is in the Fire Nation) and leaves her apartments to explore the palace.

The last time she was here, the palace was under a cloud of tension. There were injured to tend to, and dead to bury, and no one – especially not a ragtag group of teenagers from other nations who’d just helped overthrow the Fire Lord – had felt safe. It had rather dampened the atmosphere; not to mention, Katara had been sort of preoccupied with keeping Zuko alive. The Fire Nation palace of her memory is a dreary, claustrophobic sort of place.

Now, in springtime, Zuko’s palace is open and airy. Great windows are thrown open to let fresh air in, and the palace is lit with cleverly placed skylights and mirrors rather than an overabundance of torches. Tapestries depicting old stories, or landscapes, or the Spirit World, have taken the place of the old tapestries bearing the Fire Nation symbol. It brings a lightness and a novelty to the palace. Katara rather approves – the palace has always felt sort of like a museum, but now it feels as though it’s dedicated to the spirit of the Fire Nation’s citizens, rather than its sense of nationalism. Notably missing from the halls are the busts and statues Katara had noticed years ago. No marble countenance of Fire Lords past watches over the palace now.

Katara wanders aimlessly for a time, admiring the artwork and the views. It’s not too long before she starts to wonder _how_ lost she is; she thinks she might be able to get back to her apartments, but she’s not sure. It’s only when the sixth evening bell rings that she realizes that she _really_ doesn’t know where she is, and she’s supposed to meet Zuko for dinner in just an hour.

“Alright,” she mutters to herself, looking around. “You can do this. You don’t even get lost on the ice shelves. How hard can a palace be?” Katara has seen that particular tapestry before, hasn’t she? The one with the red flowers looks familiar – but no, the one next to it is new.

“Monkey feathers,” she sighs. She _is_ lost.

“ _Monkey feathers_?” says a flat voice incredulously. “I know you dated a _monk_ for two years, but you’ve got to have better swear words than that.”

Katara spins to find Mai leaning against a column, watching her with disinterested eyes. Katara shrugs, irritated at being caught unawares. Mai is a trusted friend and advisor of Zuko’s, she knows – but Katara’s only interaction with the other girl has consisted of Mai throwing sharp objects at her.

But then, there was a time when her only interaction with Zuko had consisted of him throwing fire at her. Katara gives the tall girl a cautious smile.

“Mai,” she says in greeting. “It’s nice to see you.”

Mai’s face doesn’t change. “Lost, waterbender?”

Katara’s nerves prickle. _This girl is not my enemy anymore._ Her fingers itch for her waterskin anyway. “A bit,” she says. “I’m supposed to meet Zuko in a little while for dinner –”

“You probably shouldn’t wander around too much alone,” Mai says. “It’s not always safe, even in the palace.” She starts to walk away, then calls over her shoulder, “Are you coming, or did you want to walk in circles some more?”

Katara hastens after her. “What do you mean, it’s not safe? How is the _palace_ not safe?”

“Spirits, you’re naïve,” Mai sighs. “Do you really think there’s enough money floating around for Zuko to lock this place up like a fortress? He can’t do everything. And as long as there are holes in his security, the palace will never really be safe. There’s still malcontents who would love to take out the Fire Lord – or his _honored guest_.”

Katara is almost impressed with the amount of disdain that the girl manages to layer into her words. “Amazing,” she says lightly. “I can hardly believe your attitude hasn’t scared them all off by now.”

Mai’s mouth twitches. Amusement, Katara thinks – or perhaps annoyance? “We wouldn’t have to rely so much on my _attitude_ if Zuko’s little ‘save the world’ gang had actually protected him once you shoved him onto his father’s throne. All of you just scampered off and left him alone.” _Annoyance. Definitely annoyance._ “But that’s not my business. He’s glad you’re here, so whatever. Take this hall all the way down and to the left, and then the private royal dining salon is the third door on the right.” With that, Mai turns on her heel and walks away with a stride that defies Katara to follow her.

“Goodbye to you, too,” Katara murmurs under her breath, and turns to follow the corridor all the way down and to the left. She refuses to let Mai’s words make her feel guilty.

She stops in front of the third door on the right. It is a shockingly unassuming door, for one that leads to Zuko’s personal dining room. It’s odd – she has been looking forward to this dinner all afternoon, but now she is dreading opening this door for reasons that she either cannot comprehend or does not want to name.

Katara sinks down onto a bench opposite the door, and stares. Zuko eats behind this door, she thinks – regularly. He eats in this room, because it is the Fire Lord’s private dining room, and he is the Fire Lord. All these years, she has sort of ignored his royal trappings and focused on Zuko, her friend – but perhaps she has done him a disservice. Perhaps she should have acknowledged the burden he bears.

She concentrates for a moment on how he looked this morning at the docks. Regal, she’d said – and he had. All deep red silk and burnished gold trim and stately lines. His hair, flowing down from his topknot to brush his shoulders. His posture, so steady and composed – like her father’s. He stands like a man who knows that people depend on him.

Zuko stands like a prince.

Katara blows out a heavy breath at the thought. It has never been difficult to see Aang as the Avatar; but her friend Zuko, the one who has helped her scrub cooking pots and laughed at Sokka’s dumb jokes and taught Toph crude Fire Nation sailing songs – that feels like a totally different person than the Fire Lord. Suddenly Katara feels nervous, nearly intimidated, as though she is about to dine with a stranger, some powerful, anonymous man she hardly knows.

Clenching her abdominal muscles to stifle the churning in her stomach, Katara rises and tentatively prods the door open. The private royal dining room is a surprisingly small space; it holds only a rectangular wooden table surrounded by maybe a dozen plush chairs, and a tea cart in the corner. Two other doors are on the opposite wall. To Katara’s right, wide windows let in light and fresh air.

Zuko sits at the table, surrounded by a pile of what appears to be paperwork. He is reading a letter with a slight frown that puts a line in his brow. He looks up as she enters, and smiles. “Katara! You found it.”

“Am I early?” she asks apologetically. “You seem busy.”

He shakes his head and sets the letter aside. “No, there’s a certain amount of my workload that I sort of just…carry with me through the day. It’s the easiest way to make sure I get everything done – and this way I don’t have to wait for a footman to fetch a scroll from my office.”

Katara makes a face at the pile of papers and slides into a chair across from him. “Zuko, that’s horrible.”

He snorts out a laugh. “You think this is bad, you ought to see my private library. It’s just legal books. _Tons_ of legal books. And the only reason I have them in my private library is because they’re too heavy to cart back and forth from the Royal Library all the time.”

Katara thinks about being shut into an office surrounded by books on Fire Nation law all day and decides that she’d rather be abandoned on a glacier in the middle of blizzard season than have Zuko’s job. “Thanks for making time to have dinner with me,” she tells him with a smile. “I guess I hadn’t really thought about how busy you must be these days.” She feels awkward and shy, unable to look him directly in the eye.

“‘Ah, but Master Katara!’” he says in a not-altogether-terrible impression of Iroh, raising his eyebrows and holding up one finger as the old man tends to do whenever he delivers a pithy bit of wisdom. “‘One is never too busy to have a good meal with an old friend.’”

Katara giggles. “Your Iroh impression is better than it used to be.”

“Thanks,” he says dryly. “I practice it in the mirror.” He reaches behind him and tugs on a small tasseled cord. Somewhere, a bell rings, and a moment later a servant wheels a cart through one of the doors. With quick, practiced motions, the boy sets out glasses and pours dark wine into them. One he places in front of Katara; the other he sets in front of Zuko with obvious reverence. Plates of dumplings, meats in sauce, and steamed vegetables follow the wine. The whole process takes no longer than a few heartbeats.

Zuko smiles at the boy, who is perhaps fourteen and in dire need of a haircut. “Thank you, Juzo,” the Fire Lord says kindly. Juzo beams.

“Ring if you need anything else, sire,” he says. He bows to Zuko, then to Katara. “Lady,” he says in acknowledgement, and then disappears back through the door.

“Clearly, your servants like you,” Katara says with a barely smothered smile.

Zuko flushes a bit. “He’s a good kid,” he says. “I hired him into my household a few years ago after I caught him trying to pick my pocket.”

Katara raises her eyebrows. “He was trying to pick the Fire Lord’s pocket?”

“It was dark,” Zuko says defensively. “He didn’t know it was me. I was in the middle of a crowd; I wasn’t exactly advertising my title.”

Katara snorts. “So, you caught a street urchin trying to pickpocket you and you brought him back to the palace to train him as a manservant? What did Sazeh do?”

Zuko grins at the memory. “We’re lucky he’s not a firebender. He’d have burned the whole place down around our heads. He got over it, though. He still likes to pretend that he doesn’t like Juzo, but I’ve caught him sneaking Juzo sweets when he thinks no one’s looking.” He lifts his glass of wine and raises it to her in a toast. “To second chances,” he says.

Katara’s cheeks heat with a blush. She doesn’t look away from Zuko’s lopsided golden gaze as she picks up her own glass and returns the gesture. “To deserving them,” she answers.

He smiles, small and melancholic. “No one deserves them. Thank the spirits for people who give them to us anyway,” he says, and takes a sip of wine.

Katara takes a sip of wine and hopes that it will wash down the lump in her throat. The wine is sweet and rich; heady, nearly overwhelming on the first taste. She blinks. “What is this?”

“Plum wine. I usually water mine down, but it’s unlucky to water it before you’ve taken the first drink.” He reaches for a water pitcher, pours a bit into his glass, and offers her the pitcher. “No idea why, though.”

Katara smiles slightly and brings one hand up, over, down, pulling on the water simply for the pleasure of it. The water follows her motion, streams out of the pitcher and into her glass, where it swirls prettily as it mixes with the plum wine.

“Show off,” Zuko says, and Katara’s nerves melt into laughter as she bends a few drops of water into his face.

The food is better than she remembers Fire Nation food being; although it does make sense that the Fire Lord eats better than a handful of teenagers who are on the run and trying to overthrow the government. They eat in what Zuko informs her is the informal Fire Nation style, both of them picking small servings off the serving platters rather than being served individual plates.

(While it’s never done at formal dinners, he explains, it’s the way most small gatherings of friends or families eat. Katara is glad that he does not feel the need to be formal with her here.)

Some of the food is spicier than it looks. Zuko doesn’t quite manage to hold back his laughter when her eyes water, but he shows her how to quench her burning tongue with bread or cheese. She tells him the story of the time Sokka had nearly cried after he’d eaten fire flakes at a festival, and he admits sheepishly that he keeps a stash in his desk. Juzo returns once or twice to clear empty plates or refill the wine pitcher; Zuko gives him a smile and thanks every time.

Katara is not entirely sure if it is their friendship or the wine which keeps the feeling of stilted awkwardness at bay. (In any case, she is more than a little bit unsteady on her feet by the time she rises from the table.) But they sit and laugh and tell old stories for longer than they probably ought to; Juzo clears away the dinner course and brings them sweet cream and berries for dessert, and then he clears that away and brings them a pai sho board to linger over while they talk and empty the wine pitcher. It is, Katara will think later, the most relaxed she has felt in a very long time; there is no one to demand that she come heal someone, no one who needs a lesson, no one who wants the Last Southern Waterbending Master to come solve a problem. It is just her and Zuko, and when he looks at her and smiles Katara feels like the entire world has shrunk down to the two of them.

It is only when Juzo covers a yawn as he refills the pitcher that they realize how much time has passed. Katara shoots a regretful glance at the window, where the sky has darkened to night and the lamps outside have been lit. “I shouldn’t have kept you this long,” she says. “I’m sure Sazeh will be fuming.”

Zuko’s eyes dance with amusement. “Probably,” he says gravely. “But I was furthering diplomatic relations, and that’s always a good use of a Fire Lord’s time. Plus, it was charitable.”

“Charitable?” Katara demands, ready to be offended.

His smirk grows into a full grin. “Yeah,” he says. “You’re the worst pai sho player I’ve ever seen. I can’t let you embarrass the Southern Water Tribe if you end up playing with one of my advisors or something. _That’s_ diplomatic. And – I played the whole game without pointing out how bad you are. _That’s_ charitable.”

She collapses into a fit of laughter. “I’m going to dump ice water down your robes when you least expect it,” she threatens. “‘Charitable!’ I should freeze you to your chair.”

“You could,” he says with aplomb, “but you would’ve still lost at pai sho.”

Katara wipes at her eyes. “Maybe you can take time out of your busy schedule to teach me, then, since I’m so inept,” she says, biting back on the trailing gurgles of laughter that want to escape her throat.

“I might have to,” he muses. “If Uncle ever sees the way you play, he might have a heart attack. Really, it’s just a public service –” Zuko has to stop with a grin when his comments send Katara into another fit of mirth.

“Oh, I need to go to bed,” she sighs as her laughter subsides. “I’m slap-happy, I think.”

“And tipsy,” he supplies.

“That’s your fault.”

“Blame Juzo,” Zuko says blandly. The boy, who sits quietly near the tea cart, looks up with an expression of nearly comical insult. “He was the one who kept pouring the wine.”

“That’s his job,” Katara points out, and rises from her chair with a stretch. “Perhaps a rain check on the end of this game? I really do need some sleep.”

Zuko considers the pai sho board and shoots her a quick smirk. “Maybe we could just start over,” he suggests, getting to his feet. “Let me call someone to escort you back to your rooms? I know the palace is a bit much if you’re not used to it.”

“I can find my way back,” Katara starts to protest, but Zuko is already murmuring something to Juzo, who nods and scampers off through the servants’ door.

“It’s easier this way,” Zuko explains. “I don’t have to worry about you being lost, and you get back to your rooms quicker. Trust me. When my family first moved to the palace, I was maybe eight years old, and I got lost on a daily basis.”

Katara wants to ask more about Zuko as a small child, wants to open the door to his early memories and hear about his childhood. But she knows that it’s a painful subject for him, knows that he may not even have said this much if they hadn’t been indulging in the plum wine. So she leaves it alone. “Then I’ll accept a guide for now, and tomorrow I’ll ask someone for a map,” Katara says with a smile.

Zuko bows his head slightly in acknowledgement. “Then I’ll leave you in the capable hands of my household,” he says. “Good night, Katara.”

“Good night,” she says, and turns to follow the waiting maid. She does not look over her shoulder; so she wonders, later, if she imagined the weight of his gaze, or if Zuko had really watched her leave.

***

The Royal Library is both exactly what Katara expected, and more than.

It is an overwhelmingly large structure, with shelves and alcoves stretching out of sight, where only ladders and stairs can bring a determined reader to the highest reaches of the library’s stock. Haughty-looking librarians with spectacles and sweeping robes glide about with a permanently disapproving look on their faces, as though there is not a single person in the world who is worthy of looking upon their books and they find it _quite_ an affront that anyone would even ask. Katara thinks to herself that Wan Shi Tong would get along very well with these stiff-necked scholars; whether or not that is a good thing is probably a matter of perspective.

At first, the librarians either ignore her or shoot her disdainful glances. Katara is perfectly happy to ignore the lot of them; but she can’t quite make sense of the cataloguing system on her own, so after an hour or so she approaches a stern-looking young man with an apologetic smile. “I’m looking for books or scrolls or journals that might deal with the Southern Water Tribe,” she tells him. “Perhaps a collection of myths, or journal entries from the war?” He sneers at her for a moment, and then she thinks to pull Zuko’s ring from her pocket. “I have the Fire Lord’s permission to browse the library,” Katara adds, and suddenly the librarian is falling over himself to help her.

The materials that pertain to the Southern Water Tribe are not stored together. Scrolls concerning the spirit world are organized by origin and then age of legend; soldiers’ journals from the war are in the history section, then the ‘100 Year War’ subsection, and then organized chronologically. Anything about waterbending is in the ‘bending and spirituality’ section; anything about politics is in the ‘politics’ subsection of the history section. Katara follows her librarian around, letting him pile scrolls and journals and books in a cart. Before long she has a collection that she can’t possibly get through in one day. “Can I…set this aside somehow?” she says, bemused. “Or save my place? I want to get through all of these, but I don’t read all that quickly.”

The young librarian nearly falls over himself to reassure her. “We’ll set aside a study room for you, my lady,” he tells Katara. “Nothing will be disturbed. We will only clean with your permission, and no materials will be removed until you give permission.”

She smiles uncertainly. “You don’t have to go to any trouble.”

“It’s no trouble at all for you, my lady,” he assures her.

“Please, it’s just Katara,” she says. “I’m not a lady.”

He gives her a wry smile. “Anyone who bears that ring is at _least_ a lady, Lady Katara,” he says, and then he shows her to a study room and leaves her alone with a bow.

Katara watches the librarians and scribes haul in reading materials, a tea service, and a lamp – just in case she should want to continue her studies after the sun no longer lights the room through the windows. The small study room includes a writing desk and several cushy chairs, complete with throw pillows and a drawer with scratch paper and writing utensils so she can take notes. There is a daybed in one corner, and a painting of fire lilies hangs on the wall. Everything looks elegant and expensive and much too fine for a girl from the Southern Water Tribe. All at once Katara feels utterly overwhelmed. “This is so kind of you,” she murmurs. “You really don’t need to…” she struggles to put words to what, exactly, it is that she doesn’t want them to bother with.

They only back out of the room with a bow and leave her with piles of paper and an unlit lamp. She huffs out a long breath, then sinks into a chair. _Quickest begun, quickest done_ , Gran-Gran’s voice says dryly in the back of Katara’s mind. Katara nods resolutely and grabs the scroll closest to her. Time to get to work.

It takes very little time for Katara to realize that she’s in over her head. She’s never embarked on a serious research project before; the closest she’s ever gotten is when she, Sokka, and Aang had combed Wan Shi Tong’s library for information about the Fire Nation. That had been more of a blind grasping than a structured search; they had had no idea what to look for, and their success, Katara realizes now, was more due to luck than anything else. _This_ project is going to require a great deal more organization.

For the next week, Katara sorts her reading materials by subject and nation of origin, and then by age. Then she settles down to start reading. The table in the middle of her study room quickly becomes covered by pages and pages of Katara’s notes. She’s suddenly immensely grateful that the library staff doesn’t clean unless she requests it; her system of organization _looks_ like a giant mess, but she knows exactly where everything is, and she’d probably never find anything again if someone tried to neaten up.

Every once in a while, one of the clerks will enter the room with a quiet knock, replace the old teapot or inkwell with fresh, and then leave with a bow. Katara is usually too absorbed in her work to do more than give them a small smile in thanks, but one day she brings a basket of expensive pastries for the clerks who have been helping her. She leaves the basket and a note on the desk where the clerks sort materials to be re-shelved. The clerks still don’t clean unless she asks them to; but now she sometimes finds candied almonds or cut flowers on the writing desk next to the fresh tea and ink.

When her eyes are tired and she starts to feel restless, she explores the palace. Many of the old rooms are empty most of the year; lots of the apartments are rented by noble families, governors, politicians, or high-ranking military officials. These sit and wait for their occupants to need them; sheets cover the furniture, and the doors are only opened for once-monthly dusting. The apartments that are occupied host a mixture of nobles and bureaucrats (most of whom also have separate offices within the palace). The grand stone building with its expensive tapestries and army of staff, Katara realizes, performs the same function for the Fire Nation that the village’s gathering hut does in Katilvik: it is merely a place where the nations’ leaders can all gather, for convenience’s sake, while they do what must be done. It is done with a great deal more pomp and grandeur; but once Katara comes to this conclusion the palace becomes much less intimidating.

(No matter where she is in the world, Katara has found that people are, fundamentally, just _people_. This is no less true in the Fire Nation than anywhere else.)

Zuko finds her like this one afternoon, meandering aimlessly around the palace. “Lost?” he asks, amused.

She smiles at him. “No, just wandering around,” she says. “I need to stretch my legs every so often, or the reading makes me feel half-dead.”

“Tell me about it,” he says with a half-grin, falling into step beside her. “The library staff tells me that you’re one of the more dedicated scholars that they’ve seen lately. Apparently, the clerks adore you.”

Katara blushes. “They probably think I’m insane,” she mutters. “This project hardly makes any sense to me half the time.”

“My first year as Fire Lord, a scholar from the university in Ba Sing Se asked permission to use the library because he was trying to calculate the weight of the sun.”

Katara blinks. “I – what?”

Zuko nods seriously.

“Why would you need to weigh the sun? How would you even measure it?”

“My point is, your project – looking into the past of your tribe – is _hardly_ the strangest thing they’ve ever seen someone research. I’d doubt that it’s the strangest thing they’ve seen this month.”

“Did you let him use the library?”

Zuko’s mouth twitches in amusement. “Of course,” he says, mock offended. “I’d never withhold the Royal Library’s resources from such a distinguished and serious scholar.”

“Did he figure it out?”

“He said he did.”

“How much?”

Zuko blinks. “What?”

Katara bites back a grin. “How much does the sun weigh?” she asks patiently.

He frowns. “You know, I really don’t remember.” Katara snorts out a laugh, and Zuko gives her a rueful grin. “Are you wandering in any particular direction?”

She shakes her head. “No, just exploring, really.”

“Have you found the gardens yet?”

Katara perks up. “Gardens? Like flowers and things?”

Zuko smiles at her. It is a fond look, with no condescension for her provincial excitement. “And a pond,” he says. “Want to check it out?”

“Lead the way.”

It’s not that far of a walk; the pleasure gardens are between the Library and the royal apartments, so they don’t have to go far. Zuko leads Katara out to a covered pavilion with large glass doors and windows that can be opened and closed with pulleys.

“In the fall, we’ll have storm-viewing parties,” he tells her. “The pavilions are protected from the rain, so we gather to celebrate the heat breaking. We open the windows and thank the spirits for the rain.” His smile is odd, distant. “My mother loved the storm-viewing parties.”

Katara’s heart contorts painfully. “She would be glad to know you still have them, then,” she says, because it is all she can think to say.

Zuko glances at her, then away; but he says nothing. Katara curses herself for saying the wrong thing. It does not happen to her often; she has always comforted people easily. But Zuko is sharp corners and hard edges in some ways, and soap-bubble-fragile in others. Katara is never quite sure which side of him she is seeing. Evidently, this time she got it wrong.

“This part used to just be the private royal gardens,” Zuko says. Katara can feel a body of water in the same direction he is walking; it presses on her senses in the most passive of ways. It is, she can tell, small and slow-moving, nearly stagnant. But it is _water_ , more water than will fit in a drinking glass or her waterskins or a bath, and suddenly Katara’s limbs ache with the desire to move through her bending forms. She quells the want. She is here as a diplomat and a guest; it wouldn’t _do_ for the visiting Southern waterbender to start practicing her forms with the Fire Lord’s koi pond.

Zuko is still talking about the gardens. “I wanted people to be able to enjoy this, and it’s too much space to justify keeping it to myself. So it’s been open to anyone who lives in the palace for the last few years,” he’s saying.

“It’s beautiful,” Katara says honestly, gazing around at the carefully cultivated flowers and trees. “We don’t have anything like this at home. Well, I mean – we don’t have a whole lot of plants at home. Some mosses and herbs that can survive the cold. But the idea of people spending so much time taking care of _plants_ – it’s always stunned me. And especially to do it just because it’s beautiful. That’s amazing.”

“You don’t do things just because they’re beautiful in the South?”

Katara considers that as she examines a shrub with little white flowers. “The new gathering hut, it has prayers and pictures carved into the walls,” she says. “And we used to take blankets and furs and things and go sit outside the walls to watch the southern lights. But everything at home is functional _._ We have things that are beautiful; but they’re never _just_ beautiful. That’s a luxury we couldn’t afford.”

“We saw the lights one night, on my steamer,” Zuko says softly. “I had barely taken the bandages off, and the cold air was so soothing. I thought it was a sign that I was going in the right direction. We just wandered around the southern seas, fishing and hoping. We were about to head north, to warmer waters – and then we saw the lights.” He sighs. “I thought, that’s Agni telling me to keep heading south. I wanted to head straight for the South Pole. Fortunately, my uncle talked me into spending the winter at a trading post at the far south of the Earth Kingdom. It was still miserably cold, but we didn’t lose any men, at least.”

“You’re not that boy anymore, you know,” Katara says, and he winces and looks away.

“Thank Agni for my uncle,” Zuko says lightly, and Katara thinks that if he has gotten any better at changing the subject in the last three years, it is only by the most marginal degree.

“I was promised a pond,” she reminds him, and he grins at her.

“This way,” he says, and leads her past a tree with pink blossoms to a small pond. The water moves lazily, but it is clean and lovely and presses against her senses like a salve she hadn’t realized she’d needed. Katara sighs happily.

She hardly thinks about it; she just goes to the edge of the water, kneels down, and plunges her hands into the pond. The water ebbs and flows around her fingers with a subtle pressure that feels like _hello, Katara_. She lets out a contented little hum.

Zuko sinks down to the ground next to her, grinning broadly. “Sorry, have my servants not offered you a bath lately?”

She blushes and pulls her hands from the water. “Shut up, Zuko,” she mutters, but she gives him a shy smile in return.

“You miss the water,” he says. It’s not a question.

She sighs. “It’s silly. The air here is so wet that I should feel perfectly at home.”

“There’s an ocean right there,” Zuko tells her, and points in the direction of the docks.

“It’s different,” Katara says. “That’s… _dock_ water. It’s got all sorts of trash and debris in it. Besides, there’s nowhere that I could go to bend without people seeing me. And I don’t know how to get down there anyway.”

“The palace guards would accompany you anywhere you asked.”

“Yes, but…” she bites her lip, and charges on. “I wouldn’t want to take them away from somewhere they’re needed.”

“We have plenty of staff, Katara,” he says with a roll of his eyes.

“Mai said –”

Zuko’s brow furrows. “ _Mai_ said? Mai said _what_ , exactly?”

“That you’re not safe,” Katara says softly. “That you’re in danger. Still.”

The fight seems to go out of Zuko. He blows out a heavy breath. “I’m not in danger,” he says carefully. “You don’t need to worry about me.”

“But are you _safe_?” Katara stresses.

He doesn’t answer her.

“Tell me,” she orders.

“It’s nothing,” he insists. “It’s just…malcontents. People who really believed that the Fire Nation is superior, and we’re meant to rule the world. Or people who were getting rich off the war and are mad that it’s stopped. People who have lost power since I came to the throne. I was always going to make enemies, Katara. We all knew that.”

“Well, I’m here now,” she says firmly. “And I’m not letting anything happen to you. So I expect you to start telling me about these things.”

He laughs – and then stops just as suddenly, when he realizes she’s serious. “You don’t have to protect me, Katara.”

“You don’t have to protect me, either,” Katara says. She thinks of falling rocks and Zuko’s hands, of lightning and the reek of burning flesh and Azula’s laugh. “That’s never stopped you.”

His face is nearly unreadable. Katara remembers the open-faced boy he used to be, the way he wore every emotion on his sleeve. “You’ve never needed protecting,” he says.

Katara sniffs and puts her nose in the air. “Well, that’s because I’m tougher than you,” she says haughtily, and shoots him a sidewise smile so he’ll know she’s kidding.

Zuko holds both his hands up in surrender. “I’d bet on you in any fight,” he agrees with a grin.

“I’m probably getting rusty,” she grumbles. “I haven’t _really_ practiced in weeks. And I haven’t sparred with anyone since I left the South Pole.”

“That’s easy enough to fix,” Zuko says, and he gets to his feet. “Shall we?”

Katara stares up at him, shocked. The glint in his eyes is one she remembers well; it’s the focused energy that he gets before any fight, the look a younger Zuko wore whenever he was getting ready for a challenge. It’s a look he’s worn many times as he gazes at her; first as an enemy, then as an ally. It’s an expression she has not seen on his face since before the comet, and it makes her blood thrill to the implied dare. “You want to spar?” she demands.

He is wearing clothes spun from the finest silk and linen, his hair pulled into an immaculate topknot, the Fire Lord’s headpiece glinting against the coal of his hair. He looks like _royalty_. He does not look like the boy who sparred with her on Ember Island.

But he only cocks one eyebrow and says, “Unless you’re scared.”

Katara springs to her feet. “You are _so_ on,” she says, and starts to yank the water from the pond.

Zuko stops her with a small gesture. “On the practice grounds,” he says, lips quirking as though he is trying to bite back a smile. “I appreciate the enthusiasm, but that pond is home to some turtleducks I’m quite fond of. I think they’d be put out if you hurled them at me.”

Katara releases the water and gives the Fire Lord a sheepish grin. “Just testing you,” she tells him, and he laughs.

The palace practice yards are a farther walk; they lie behind the palace, near the stables, smithy, and storehouses. There are three separate areas to the practice grounds, Zuko tells her: an exclusively non-bending arena, an exclusively bending arena, and a hybrid arena, where non-benders can practice against benders, or benders against chi-blockers. The third arena is a new addition. “It was Ty Lee’s idea,” Zuko says as they make their way to the benders’ arena. “She knew how dangerous a chi-blocker could be, especially since the Fire Lord’s personal guard is traditionally only made up of benders. We’ve seen massive improvements in our benders since they started training with Ty Lee. It’s good for them to know they’re not invincible, I think.”

At Zuko’s request, the palace guards have rolled several barrels of water into a sparring circle. The sparring circles in the Fire Nation are larger than the ones Katara is used to; since the point of the circle is that the fighter who steps outside the line forfeits, the sparring circles in the South Pole are small to encourage precision and flexibility. The Fire Nation benders make their circles larger – due, Katara presumes, to their emphasis on power over subtlety. Katara notes the chalk line in the dirt and smiles. She will show them to value precision over strength.

Zuko sheds his tunic and shoes and steps into the circle clad only in breeches. Katara’s mouth is suddenly very, very dry.

Has Zuko always been so…well-built?

Katara feels her face heat furiously with the thought, but she cannot banish it. The young Fire Lord’s torso is immaculately sculpted. Muscles ripple from his broad shoulders down to his tapered waist. Katara cannot help but follow the line of one powerful leg with her eyes as Zuko assumes a ready stance; the strength and grace and latent power of his half-naked body remind her of a leopard-seal ready to strike. Katara tries futilely to clear her throat and sinks into a bending stance.

“D’you think three barrels of water is enough for you?” Zuko asks, half-tauntingly, and for a moment Katara can only think about bathing in ice water and drowning her blushing cheeks.

Then she remembers why they’re there, and she shakes off her distraction. “I could beat you with one waterskin,” she boasts.

“Ready,” says the guard at the edge of the sparring circle, cutting off their trash talk. “Fight!”

Within moments, their sparring circle is enveloped in steam.

Water surges forward; fire deflects. Flame lashes out; ice parries. Their sparring is an old familiar rhythm to Katara, and she falls back into it with the ease of long practice. He thrusts; she dodges. She cuts; he ducks. She finds herself grinning fiercely with the sheer joy of it, with the pure pleasure of testing her skills against someone she knows to be her equal. Pakku is a master, but his bending style is purely Northern Water Tribe. Zuko was taught by Iroh, Grand Master of the White Lotus, and his bending shows the influence of all four nations. Zuko is, as he has always been, a _challenge._

Before too long, Zuko’s soldiers are gathered around their sparring circle. Some of them cheer for their Fire Lord; some of them yell encouragement to Katara. Katara cannot hear them. Her entire world narrows down to Zuko’s face, the heat of his flames as they rocket towards her, and the water rushing around her body and through her veins. The beat of her heart echoes the pull of the tides; the water in the air and the waiting barrels answers her demanding gestures as the ocean answers the moon. Katara knows that she is breathing heavily, that her hair is damp with sweat and her clothes are sticking to her skin. She feels none of it. The savage thrill of the fight drives her on and on and on, far past the point where she should, logically, drop of sheer exhaustion.

She is not sure how long they fight before the watching guard finally calls a draw. Zuko, his naked chest – _spirits, stop thinking about his chest, Katara_ – heaving with every breath, accepts a drink of water and a cold towel from a nearby guard. Katara twists her hand, and the sweat and humidity around Zuko’s brow turns to ice. He shoots her a grateful grin as she takes a waterskin from a wide-eyed young guardswoman.

“You’re better than you were,” he says seriously.

Katara grins, still riding the high of their fight. “Same to you,” she says. “Glad to see you’re not getting lazy now that you’re the Fire Lord. Are you cut or burned anywhere?”

It is an old ritual; Katara had healed countless scrapes, cuts, and burns after training sessions on Ember Island. He gives her his forearm, where one of her ice blades has given him a long, shallow cut. Katara refuses to think about how muscular his forearm is as she covers it in healing water. There is an audible gasp from several of the watching guards as the water glows, and then a murmur of awe when Katara pulls her hands away to reveal unblemished skin.

Zuko examines his arm with a wry smile. “That’s so much handier than going to the palace healers to get patched up,” he remarks.

“I am very handy,” Katara agrees.

“I usually train first thing in the morning, just after sunrise,” he says, cautious. “You’re welcome to join me whenever you’d like. We can spar, or you can just use the practice yards. I’ll make sure there’s water barrels for you to use, if you want.”

She makes a face when he says, ‘just after sunrise,’ but Katara nods. “You’re on.”

The next morning, Katara is still yawning when she wanders out onto the practice fields. The sunlight is still weak, the shadows long. Zuko is already moving through his forms, breathing slow and deep as he stretches and bends. Katara is tempted for a moment to splash him with some ice water (because she’s grouchy in the mornings, and he looks entirely too awake) but she settles for giving him a cursory nod in greeting and settling into her stretches.

It starts a routine. Katara rolls out of bed with the sunrise and joins an annoyingly alert Zuko at the practice yards. They rarely speak; the silence of their daybreak exercise feels nearly sacrosanct, broken only when necessary. They spar, sometimes. The matches begin with one questioning head tilting towards the sparring circles, and an answering nod; they end when one person yields. On the days that they do not spar, they simply practice in proximity to each other. Zuko watches Katara as she moves through the traditional Northern forms, and as she tries new ones. He offers no feedback except an approving nod every once in a while.

After they are done, they head back to the palace for morning tea and breakfast, and it is only then that they break their companionable silence. The morning meal is the only one Zuko usually takes a break for, Katara learns; he eats his noon and evening meals at his desk, or between meetings. So he tells her, over tea and fruit, of ministers and supplicants and letters from Iroh, and she tells him about old Water Tribe myths and century-old politics and the migration patterns of southern leopard-seals. Then they leave: she to the library and her seemingly endless research, and he to his office and his truly endless duties.

It is a comfortable routine, and one she likes; Katara sends letters home to Sokka and Hakoda assuring them that she is happy and well and dedicated to her project. Spring simmers into a scorching broil and the air thickens with oppressive humidity as summer starts to rear its head.

As the days grow hotter and the nights grow dense with humidity and the chirping of insects, Katara can feel the approaching full moon – the first of the hot season. It pulls at her, keeping her awake later into the night and waking her long before the dawn as it waxes fuller. Her veins thrum with pent-up energy as the waxing moon pulls on the ocean and on Katara’s heartbeat.

On the night that the full moon is due to rise, Katara is in her study room in the Royal Library, and she is in a staring match with an unopened book.

This book is different – _this_ book is a journal, and it was written by an officer who oversaw the raids on the Southern Water Tribe. _This_ book feels heavier than it should, and picking it up makes Katara want to wash her hands.

But she has reached the point in her research where she needs to read about the war, and that means reading this.

Her hands shake when she opens the journal, no matter how much she tells them not to. The entries are sporadic and almost disconnected, but she reads:

  * _Headed back north after first raid. Three benders captured this time. Not bad. Just glad we could head home before the winter storms hit. Ready to get back to Xin Lu and the little ones._
  * _Heavy rains today. Cranked the chains tight so none of the southerners could bend at all. Captain doesn’t want to risk the ship. I told him it’s not like the ice-rats have anywhere to go. He laughed; he said that they’d sink the whole ship, and them with it, if it meant taking us down. It made the men nervous. No reason for that, I think – the youngest of them is hardly more than a boy, and he cries most of the time. The other two are the ones to worry about. The older woman just stares at you like she can see straight through you, and the younger one swears. No matter. Only a few weeks until we drop them off, and then it’s back home for the winter season before the next raids start._
  * _The younger female waterbender had to be thrown overboard today. Apparently, she fought the restraints until her wrists bled, and the infection killed her. The older one keeps saying that if we’d given them water, they could’ve saved her. No idea what that’s supposed to mean._
  * _We’re nearly to the encampment. The boy just stares now. No tears; I wonder if it’s because of the dead girl? She must have meant something to him. Or maybe he’s just shut off his emotions; I hear these savages can do that._



On and on and on it goes; the officer writing the journal discusses brutality and torture with the casual air of one who is reporting what he ate for breakfast that morning. Handing the prisoners over to a war camp merits only one line:

_Finished the mission today – home next!_

Katara slams the journal shut, biting back on the bile that is rising in her throat. _Hardly more than a boy – could’ve saved her – crank the chains tight –_ her head spins with it, with these echoes of terror and pain and fury. “Iroh warned me,” she whispers, staring with hard eyes at the journal that she has pushed away like it’s a venomous ant-scorpion poised to sting. “And that’s just the first raid.” There has to be _more_ , she reasons – more detail, somewhere, about the benders and their fighting techniques. More about the people who had been stolen from the South Pole. And less, she hopes, about what they had been forced to endure.

But before Katara opens the journal again, she rises and goes to the window. The clerks have left incense sticks and matches in the study room; Katara is not sure what their original purpose was, but she is far from the South Pole and does not have the dried lichen and herbs that she would normally burn to honor the dead. So this will have to do.

She lights the incense and places it on the windowsill. “Rest easy,” she murmurs. “May Yue and La guide you safely over ice and sea, to find your peace on the other side.” Katara wishes she knew their names, the woman and the boy on the ship, and the poor girl who had been abandoned to the mercy of the ocean. But she does not, so she can only hope that the spirits understand who her prayer is meant for. Then she returns to the journal with dry eyes and gritted teeth.

***

There is only so much horror she can be expected to swallow in one evening. When she grows tired of her head aching and her stomach churning with revulsion, Katara douses the lamp and blows out the incense sticks. Night has fallen in earnest, but Yue, in her full glory, bathes the Caldera with a silver glow. The fullness of the moon pulls at Katara; she feels itchy, as though her skin is too small for her body. Her hands clench and unclench as she walks towards her rooms, sizzling with nervous energy.

“Katara?”

She whirls, hands coming up defensively. She has grasped every available liquid without thinking about it; her waterskins are at her waist, and there are two potted plants near the wall, and the person who has just walked up behind her –

Is _Zuko_.

Katara yanks her hands back down to her sides, fisting them together into knots as though that will erase the fact that she had just seized Zuko’s heartbeat, been ready to command his blood as though she has the right to do so. The Fire Lord – her _friend_ – looks at her with concern. Katara wonders bitterly if his expression would be more fearful if he realized what she had been about to do.

Zuko is frozen, holding out both hands in a _peace_ gesture. His dark clothing blends, nearly seamlessly, with the shadows cast by the lanterns. “Sorry,” he murmurs. “I didn’t mean to sneak up on you.”

“Not your fault,” she manages to say through gritted teeth. “I’m just a little jumpy tonight.”

“Everything okay?”

“Sure,” she says, too quickly. “Full moon. It makes me restless.”

Zuko glances up at the moon where it hangs, heavy over the horizon. “Like the comet,” he guesses.

“Not quite to that extent,” Katara says, forcing herself to relax. “But it’s a noticeable boost.”

“Is that why you’re up so late?”

Katara looks at the night sky, realizes it’s several hours after sunset. “I guess,” she says. “I was…studying. I didn’t realize how late it was.”

“You ought to get some sleep,” Zuko says softly. “You look tired.”

“Long day,” she says shortly. “I’m headed back towards my room.”

He nods, once, slowly. “Do you need me to walk with you?”

“No!” Katara’s nails bite into her palm. Her voice is sharper than she had meant it to be; Zuko flinches just a tiny bit. “Sorry,” she says, making her voice into a near-whisper. “I just…I might stop by the gardens first. Meditate, maybe. Alone.”

He only looks at her for a long moment, his amber eyes darkened to a honey-gold in the dim lantern light. “As you wish,” he says finally. “The gardens are down that hall and through the door with the vine carvings.”

“Thanks,” Katara says, and follows his pointing hand without thinking about it. She glances back over her shoulder before she turns the corner; Zuko is already gone.

It is tempting to ignore Zuko’s directions and just go back to her apartments; but the more that Katara thinks it over, the more meditating under the full moon really does sound appealing. She slips into the gardens and finds a soft patch of grass next to the turtle-duck pond where she can sit and bend gentle, soothing currents through the water. The patterns of her hands and the tiny tides she creates draw her into a drowsy stupor, and she dozes.

_Hama leers over her, hands like crooked blades. “You know what you have to do,” she croons. “Stop me, Katara.”_

_“No,” Katara gasps, “I’ll never do it again!”_

_“I’ll never do it again,” says Hama, singsong, mockingly._

_“I’ll never do it again,” says the captain of the Southern Raiders._

_“I’ll never do it again,” says Zuko, and he is wearing his Fire Lord robes and he knows, he knows, he knows –_

_“Monster,” Zuko condemns her, and Katara is screaming a denial, and her screams sound like Azula’s, like a half-mad princess who has lost everything, everything._

_Katara begs, she is sorry, she didn’t mean to, it was an accident –_

_Zuko raises his hands and pulls lightning out of his heart. “It’s better this way,” he says, and the world turns blue._

Katara jolts upright with a gasp, Zuko’s name on her lips. She catches herself, only a half a heartbeat before she actually – spirits, was she really about to call Zuko’s name out _loud_ , in the royal gardens, in the middle of the night? Katara waits a moment to see if she’ll die of embarrassment.

Luckily the only witnesses are a trio of snoozing turtle-ducks, who do not stir when Katara gets to her feet with a groan. She feels as stiff as though she has been sitting for hours, but a quick glance at the sky tells her that it is barely past midnight – perhaps an hour and a half, maybe two at the most, has passed since she settled down to meditate. Her dream was only a momentary disturbance.

“This is why I never try to sleep during a full moon,” Katara mutters, casting a sour glance at the sky. Her restlessness has not faded; if anything, it is worse now. She flexes her hands, feels the water in the pond surge in response. It is not enough. She wants the crash and pull of the sea, wants the fury and depth and power of the tides.

Before the idea has even fully formed, and long before she can talk herself out of it, Katara is heading for the back of the garden, where she knows there is a gate that leads off the palace grounds and into the city.

***

Katara does not head straight for the docks, but rather goes towards a small inlet she can feel just on the south side of the harbor. That, she reasons, will give her greater privacy, and hopefully access to water that isn’t heavy with trash and silt.

She expects to be the only person on the streets. But the Caldera at night is – if not _bustling_ – still energetic. Night laborers are working, or heading home, and Katara can hear the noise from the taverns as she makes her way, unerringly, towards water. Sokka’s head would explode if he knew she was walking through a strange city alone, past midnight; but anyone who messes with a master waterbender under the full moon is an idiot, as far as Katara is concerned.

Resolutely, she does not think of the last time she had been attacked under a full moon.

The city goes all the way to the rocky edge of the island, so there is a wall of buildings between Katara and the inlet she is looking for. Luckily for her, the buildings are formed in staggered rows of terraces, so it’s fairly simple for Katara to clamber up to the roof of one of the lower, squat buildings. She breathes in a sigh of relief at the sight of the sea. With the tides pulling on her senses, Katara moves slowly through her forms, letting the moonlight and saltwater soothe her ragged nerves.

When she finally rises from her crouch and murmurs a prayer of thanks to Yue and La, the moon is starting to dip back towards the horizon. Katara climbs down from her perch on the roof and begins to trace her steps back towards the palace, feeling much more settled than she has since before she picked up that officer’s journal in the study room. The thought of it sours her mood momentarily; but the night air is warm and smells soothingly of saltwater, and her muscles feel loose and pleasantly tired from working through her forms.

Later, she will blame her mood – half-drunk from the pleasure of bending under the full moon – for the fact that her guard is lowered. She will kick herself for only watching her surroundings with one eye as she wanders back to the palace. Katara should know better. She should be more alert.

But she is still surprised when she turns the corner to find a group of men, large and scarred and mean. The one with the most burn scars and the fiercest scowl is counting out a bag of coins while he says to one of his companions, “– barely enough to pay off the captain, let alone anyone else. Lord Zhujim won’t be best pleased. Ought to break his arms for even –” he stops when he sees Katara, and grins. “Eavesdropping, love?”

Katara skids to a halt. “My mistake,” she says, low and controlled. Fear is a tightening fist low in her belly. She flexes her hands, seizes on the liquid in her waterskins and whatever is lying in puddles and gutters. Carefully, she does not touch the pounding rhythm of the water in the men’s veins. “I took a wrong turn. Excuse me.”

The man steps towards her with a leer. “Now, don’t be running off,” he says. “Let’s have a talk about what you’ve heard, eh? And then you can make nice with me and the boys for a bit. Can’t be wandering around this part of town by yourself unless you’re looking for some new friends, hmm?”

Katara brings her hands up with a snarl. “Back off,” she warns, stepping backwards. She _thuds_ into solid male flesh, and meaty hands enclose her arms.

“None of that, now,” the fierce man says. “Just tell us what you’ve heard and –”

Katara snatches the pulse of the man who grips her biceps. She angles her hands, breaks his hold, and sends him staggering back. There is a cry of alarm – have they realized so soon what she’s doing? Nausea rolls through her stomach, and Katara shoves it aside. She can feel guilty later. She whirls to face her next attacker – but no one is there.

Steel flashes in the dim light. The lone torch her attackers possessed falls to the ground, and the alleyway plunges into darkness. There is a yell – a grunt of pain – and then the men are running, the torch and the coinpurse abandoned on the cobblestones.

Katara does not relax her defensive stance. “You have three seconds to step out where I can see you, or I’m going to toss you into the harbor and let you drown,” Katara threatens.

A figure sidles forward into the wan moonlight. The person holds a wicked-looking sword in each hand, angled low towards the ground in a waiting position. They are dressed all in black, and their face –

Katara lets out a low gasp. She blinks, once, twice, again – but the face before her does not change. The figure before her wears the face of a Water Tribe guardian spirit; a demon who lives in the winter seas, who guides the hunt and helps to scare the storms away from the glaciers. The face is clearly a mask, but…Katara reaches out a hand, then snatches it back. “Are you a spirit, or one of my people?” she asks.

The figure cocks its head to one side but does not respond.

“Either way, thank you,” she says, her voice low and shaky with the aftermath of adrenaline. “I appreciate your help.”

The water spirit twirls their swords once and slides them gracefully into a sheath on their back. Imperiously, the spirit points towards the palace.

“Yes,” Katara agrees. “I’m headed that way. I didn’t realize…” she glances down at the abandoned torch, and shudders. “I didn’t think I’d come across anyone on my way back.”

The spirit shakes their head impatiently and points once again towards the palace.

“I’m going,” Katara says, faintly annoyed. “I’m not a child, you know. I appreciate your help, but I had the situation under control.”

The spirit’s fierce blue-and-white mask turns significantly towards the end of the alley, where the men had fled, and then back to Katara.

“I _did_ ,” Katara insists. Her cheeks heat with a flush. “I was just distracted, that’s all.” She frowns, looking down at the coinpurse. “They mentioned bribing a captain, and a lord…maybe I should mention that to –” she cuts herself off, looking at the figure in the mask. She knows firsthand how easy it is to impersonate a spirit – there is no guarantee that they are a spirit at all, or even if they are friendly. She can’t mention that she knows Zuko. She can’t put him in danger.

_Although if a lord is being bribed, he may be in danger already._

Katara starts to walk towards the palace. To her surprise, the spirit falls into step beside her – although they stay hidden, moving beside her as stealthily as though they were her shadow.

“Are you a friend of the Fire Lord?” Katara demands.

The spirit pauses. Then the great blue head nods, once, slowly.

“If his advisors are taking bribes, he’s in trouble.”

The spirit nods again.

“Is that why you attacked those men?”

A shake of the head – slow, almost hesitant.

“Is that why you were watching them?” Katara presses.

A nod.

Katara frowns. “I just find out that there’s ‘malcontents’ in his city, and now his advisors are being bribed and he’s got a vigilante on the loose,” she mutters. She eyes the spirit from the corner of her eye. “Whether you’re a spirit or a very quiet human doesn’t really matter, I think. If you’re a friend of the Fire Lord, I suppose I trust you.”

The spirit does not respond. Katara sighs, and resigns herself to a quiet walk.

When they reach the edge of the palace grounds, Katara starts to head back towards the gardener’s gate she had left through. The spirit touches her arm, once, lightly. She looks at them, and they shake their head. With another commanding gesture, they indicate a wall covered by a shaky-looking trellis.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Katara says in disbelief.

The spirit points again.

“You want me to climb a _garden trellis_?” she demands.

They nod.

Katara scoffs. “No way. Not even if it led directly to the guest quarters –”

The spirit is nodding emphatically.

“It leads directly to the guest quarters,” Katara repeats.

They nod.

“And you know this…how, exactly?”

They merely cock their head to one side and wait.

“Maybe you really are a spirit,” Katara murmurs, watching them appraisingly. “I’ll offer a prayer for the sacrilege, later, if you are.”

The spirit bows its head.

“I suppose that’s a yes,” Katara says, stunned. She shoots an uneasy look at the trellis. “I suppose it’s as good a way back in as any other,” she sighs, and turns back to look at the spirit.

They’re gone, as silently and suddenly as though they had never been there.

Katara stands in the street outside the palace grounds for a long moment, holding her breath. She is not entirely sure if she hopes to hear some noise – a footstep or a cough – that will prove the figure in the blue-and-white mask to be human; or if perhaps she hopes to have some confirmation that her silent guide is indeed a guardian spirit.

She does not receive either. There is only a cat yowling in an alleyway, and a bottle breaking somewhere down the street as two people start an argument. Katara gives up and turns towards the garden trellis, praying that it doesn’t give way beneath her weight.

Katara crawls into her bed as the first rays of dawn turn the world gray. As the intoxicating tug of the full moon fades, she closes her eyes and thinks of chains, of ice and fury and saltwater and sentinel-demons with blades made of steel and moonlight. With her last coherent thoughts, Katara asks Yue and the nameless spirit to protect her from her night-terrors.

Katara sleeps, and does not dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is this a long chapter? It felt like a long chapter when I was writing it. Writing this chapter felt like slogging through old mud -- difficult, gross, and sticky. But we got there! Let me know what y'all think.
> 
> Also, I didn't use the word "fuse" in this chapter, so idk if that's a Zutara week sin or not - but this chapter hit the 'fuse' theme for me so I'm counting it.
> 
> Extra points for anyone who tags a reference in this chapter. There is more than one.
> 
> Cheers friends, see you soon!


	5. Celestial

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katara makes some impulsive decisions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GUESS WHO'S BACK?? (it's me!)
> 
> Prompt for this update was "celestial." Special thanks to those who helped me over on tumblr with getting past my writer's block. If you don't see your word in this chapter, never fear -- it's coming up in chapter 6!

Katara drags herself out of bed after only about an hour of sleep, because sunrise has come and gone, and she really does not want to explain to Zuko why she slept in this morning.

That does not mean that she is pleased to see how chipper he looks as he works through his forms at the practice yards. Thankfully, he does not ask to spar; Katara thinks that she might very well fall asleep in between one form and the next. It is not abnormal for her to stay up all night during a full moon; but she normally manages a nap the next morning, and she certainly never fights firebenders at dawn.

Zuko lets her work through her bending forms, and does not comment on how slowly she moves this morning – or how she looks as she works out a new form that she’s ~~making up~~ practicing, drawing on the Northern form but also on a brief mention in an old legend.

(If the revived Southern waterbending style is made primarily of “ _Moves Katara Made Up_ ,” then at least it will have some roots in the old ways. Even tangentially. It is, she reasons, better than nothing.)

It is not until they are settling down for tea and breakfast, back in the palace, that Zuko breaks their morning silence. 

“Uncle thinks that by the time you’re done, the Southern waterbending style will be the foremost bending style in the world,” he says, stirring honey into his tea. “He thinks that benders from all nations will come to study with you, to draw wisdom from the South.”

Katara frowns at her tea. “I don’t want that,” she says shortly. “I want to save my culture, that’s it.”

Zuko shrugs, not meeting her eyes. “Uncle wouldn’t say something like that unless he meant it,” he murmurs. “And sometimes creating something and saving something are the same thing.”

“Iroh said that?” Katara demands. She is peevishly glaring at Zuko; she cannot help it. Exhaustion drags at her eyelids and tugs irritatingly at her mood. She is never at her best when she’s tired.

“More or less,” Zuko agrees easily, and gives her a tiny smile. “You’re doing great, Katara.”

Katara wants to cry with joy; or perhaps she wants to throw something. She settles for frowning at the earnest young Fire Lord, and sipping the strong tea that Juzo has brought them. “We’ll see,” she mutters darkly. 

“Is something wrong?” Zuko asks. His face is politely interested, his eyes bland.

She glares at him. “I didn’t sleep much last night,” she says shortly. She will not tell him about mysterious spirits and corrupt advisors and danger in back alleyways. Mai’s voice echoes in her ears – _spirits, you’re naïve_. 

“Full moon,” Zuko agrees sympathetically. “I’m the same around the summer solstice.”

Katara smiles around gritted teeth. “Exactly,” she grinds out.

“Will you be up for attending a party tomorrow night?” Zuko asks, slicing into a peach. “There’s supposed to be a meteor shower, and they’re good luck, so we’re throwing a viewing party. It’s alright if you don’t feel up to going, but it would be nice to have our resident Southern tribeswoman present.” He gives her a small grin. “I’ll even sic my personal tailor on you.”

“Zuko, I can’t –”

He holds up one finger, stopping her protest. “If you don’t want to come, be honest,” he says firmly. “But if you’re coming, you’re letting my seamstress make you a gown. Trust me, the court is vicious. If they’re going to say nasty things about you behind your back, it ought to be about your personality or your politics, not your clothes.”

Katara stares at him for a long moment before letting out a peal of laughter. “Alright,” she relents. “You win. I’ll let your seamstress make me a dress so your court can talk about how intolerable I am as a person, rather than about how provincial my clothes are.”

“Thank you,” he says, unperturbed by her antics. Then his eyes sparkle, giving away his amusement. “You’ll enjoy it. If nothing else, you can tell me all of the mean things you want to say to people to keep me entertained.”

“Oh, because you never want to say mean things to people during these kinds of things?” Katara retorts. She is remembering his coronation banquet, which had been long and stuffy and overflowing with people who simpered at her and lied about how glad they were to see Ozai fall.

“I’m a prince,” Zuko points out. “I have a lifetime of practice holding my tongue.”

“Hmm,” says Katara noncommittally. 

“What?”

“Oh, nothing. I was just remembering the half-dozen times I saw you lose your temper when we were traveling,” she says with a smirk.

He winces. “I like to think I’m a little more dignified than I was then,” Zuko says ruefully. 

Katara looks at him, in simple clothes, his hair tied back, drinking tea, and thinks that the mantle of power suits him so well that he does not need the Fire Lord’s robes to be regal. “Yes,” she agrees.

He is not looking at her. “I’ll have Sazeh send my favorite seamstress to your apartments,” he’s saying, making a note on a small slip of parchment. “Is two hours from now okay? I want to give them time to work. I hate telling them they have to rush.”

Katara bites back a smile. The Fire Lord looks up at her, his brow furrowed, his eyes earnest. “They’ll do good work no matter how little time they have,” he reassures her, wrongly guessing the cause of her silence. “But I’d just rather not force them to hurry.”

“I can meet them whenever is convenient,” Katara says gently, and he smiles at her before jotting something down and handing the parchment to Juzo, who darts out of the servants’ door. 

“This won’t be that bad,” Zuko assures her. “The summer parties are a little bit lighter. It’s more of an excuse to drink expensive wine and mingle with important people than anything else. Not nearly as boring as my coronation.”

“Read my mind,” Katara admits ruefully. 

***

“Does it need to be so…” Katara considers her reflection in the mirror. “Um. Breezy?”

The dress is a striking ice-blue, made of such a delicate silk that Katara hardly feels as though she is wearing anything at all. The long skirt is slit high on one side so that her bare thigh peeks through as she walks. The top has no sleeves and a high collar — which would normally make Katara feel better, except the whole thing is so well-fitted that it leaves little of her figure to the imagination. 

“You’ll thank me for it, when you realize how hot the pavilions get during these parties,” the head seamstress, a no-nonsense woman named Iyuri, tells her frankly. 

“Are you sure I can’t wear leggings underneath this?”

“Absolutely not,” Iyuri says (for at least the fourth time). “You’ll completely ruin the line of the gown. Trust me, dear. No one ever dressed by Iyuri looks less than spectacular.”

“It is lovely,” Katara reassures her. “It’s just sort of…revealing, don’t you think?”

Iyuri rolls her eyes. “Water Tribe,” she sighs, as though that is some sort of explanation. “If you knew how many Fire Nation girls would kill to have the figure to wear this dress…”

Katara tugs at the bodice again, and Iyuri slaps her hand away. “It’s nearly sheer,” Katara points out.

“Nearly,” Iyuri agrees. “But it isn’t sheer. Do you know how long I’ve been waiting to be able to dress someone in this fabric? Not everyone can wear this color, you know.”

“Iyuri, are you sure —”

“Lady Katara, if you ask me that one more time, I am going to prick you with a needle,” Iyuri says exasperatedly.

Katara surrenders. “I really wish everyone would stop calling me a lady,” she grumbles as Iyuri makes final measurements and adjustments. “I don’t like using a title I haven’t earned.”

“Nonsense,” Iyuri says, unruffled. “Perhaps you don’t like it, but life will be easier for you here if you accept it. It instantly ennobles you; it places you on equal footing with the bureaucrats and nobles and other idiots who mill around the palace. It means that no one can treat you badly, even though you’re not Fire Nation. It means that people have to show you respect, no matter what they might think about the Water Tribes or the war or the Avatar. Take that power, dear. There may come a time when you need it.”

“You’d think the whole ‘ending the war’ thing would be enough,” Katara mutters.

“It wasn’t enough for the Fire Lord,” Iyuri replies. “Why would it be enough for you, dear? Turn, please.”

Katara frowns at that, and thinks of corrupt advisors and rough-handed bullyboys in back alleys. “Iyuri, how often do you get out into the city? To the market, or shops, or things like that?”

“Oh, often enough,” Iyuri says comfortably as she tugs and tucks and hems so swiftly Katara can barely follow the needle with her eyes. Katara is a decent seamstress, but Iyuri wields a needle with the same confidence and ease with which Suki wields her fan, or Mai her knives. “I live in the Palace District, with my daughters. It means that it’s a bit of a trek, since we work here in the palace, but the rooms in the servants’ quarters here are just so cramped. I prefer a bit more space, you know.”

“How bad is it?” Katara demands, quietly, bluntly.

Iyuri’s eyes flick upwards to meet Katara’s in the mirror; and then back down, so quickly that Katara could have imagined it. “Not as bad as it was,” she murmurs, low. “Things are better for the common people, now. There’s public schools, and hospitals, and veterans’ programs for the people returning from the war. But nothing is as well-funded as the Fire Lord would like it to be. And there’s people that blame him for it. Generally, he’s popular…but there’s some people who think it’s his fault that crime’s risen, or that the schools and hospitals are overcrowded. Never mind that their sons and daughters have come home from the war, or that the schools and the hospitals didn’t exist four years ago.”

Katara can only sigh at that. She thinks of the elders, back home, who complained that the village was growing too large, and the young men who complained that there was no one in the South to test their war-skills against, and not enough young women wanting to be married. “You can’t please everyone,” she says.

“Exactly!” Iyuri beams up at her. “Which is why I’m so glad you’ve agreed to wear this dress, dear. I knew we’d reach a compromise.”

Katara eyes the tight bodice and slit skirt with trepidation; then she blows out a breath, and thinks that she was less intimidated by Azula than she is by this petite seamstress with her efficient hands and brusque manner.

At least, she thinks, she won’t overheat.

“There,” Iyuri says with a satisfied smirk, sitting back on her heels. “A bit of fussing with the hair, some lip paint and kohl — they won’t know what hit them.”

Katara doesn’t protest the application of the makeup (a process she has loved and missed since Ba Sing Se) and the skillful, swift touches of the lady’s maid who does her hair is so soothing that she nearly nods off in the chair. Finally, after her hair has been swept into an elaborate topknot and white beads have been threaded onto the loops that frame her face, the maid pronounces her ready and points her towards the pavilion where the party is to be held.

Iyuri stops her at the door and fixes the line of the dress one last time. “One last piece of advice, dear,” the older woman tells her. “When someone tells you how lovely you look tonight, look at them when you thank them. You might see something you’re not expecting.”

Katara frowns and starts to ask what in the world that is supposed to mean, but Iyuri is shooing her out the door and towards the pavilion before she can form the words. The frown remains on her face as she enters the pavilion, and then it fades to panic.

What was she thinking?

The pavilion is glittering, dancing with light and warmth and the lush silks and satins of the shining nobility of the Fire Nation. They are cool and unemotional and sly and elegant as they pass under the garlands of summer flowers and toast by open-paneled windows. They are dressed in varying shades of red and black and gray. They are more terrifying than all the oncoming hordes of the Fire Nation navy.

“You look like you’re about to ice them all to the floor,” says Zuko’s voice from behind her left ear. 

Katara forces herself not to flinch. She instead lets a slow smile spread over her face, and relaxes her hold on the water in the room. “I was considering it,” she says, not turning around. “It was a tempting thought.”

“If only,” he sighs, and holds an arm out with a flourish. “Can I walk you in, Lady Katara?”

Katara wrinkles her nose at him, but she takes his arm. “The next person who calls me ‘lady’ is getting ice down their shirt,” she grumbles.

“Remind me to call you a lady in about an hour,” Zuko says, as he falls in step with her. “It might be a relief.”

Katara glances up at him, and nearly bites her tongue.

Zuko is dressed in immaculately cut robes of a vivid reddish-purple. The ripe-berry silk is warm against his ivory skin, and the gold-thread embroidery on his silk mantle is the same shade as his eyes, which are wrinkled into a smile as he looks down at her.

It feels distinctly unfair for some reason that Zuko is so handsome, and Katara does not care to think too hard about why.

“You should mingle,” Zuko tells her. “The drinks are right over there, then —”

“Do not leave me,” Katara orders, tightening her grip on his arm. “You invited me to this thing, you’re not allowed to abandon me until you find someone I can have an intelligent conversation with.”

Zuko grins at her. “Intelligent conversation,” he repeats, and lays his hand over hers. His hand radiates warmth, like a tiny personal furnace. The air is sticky and thick and warm as bathwater, but Zuko’s reassuring heat still makes the nervous knot in Katara’s belly melt a little. “Got it. I’ll keep an eye out.”

“Do that,” Katara instructs, wry. The melting feeling in her belly does not fade. “You owe me.”

“I owe you?” Zuko asks, cocking his solitary eyebrow.

“Absolutely.”

“Why is that, exactly?”

“You unleashed Iyuri on me,” Katara says darkly. “And she wrapped me in see-through silk and sent me here to be eaten alive by Fire Nation nobles.”

“I stand corrected,” Zuko says. “Don’t tell anyone, I don’t need an international incident. If anyone finds out how badly I’ve mistreated you, I’ll be at war with the Water Tribes.”

“Hardly,” Katara says as they meander towards the center of the room. “More like Sokka would come up here and nag at you for two straight hours.”

Zuko winces. “That’s worse.”

She grins. “Well, if you find me something to drink, it’ll be our little secret.”

Zuko raises a hand and makes a tiny gesture. Like magic, a red-robed servant appears at his elbow with two glasses of something chilled and sparkling. Zuko nods his thanks as he passes a glass to Katara. 

She sips and smiles. “One of the perks of being Fire Lord?”

“Agni knows there have to be a few. Otherwise I’d have run off into the wilderness and hidden on some isolated beach by now, where no one would ever find me. I’d become a fisherman, or something.”

“Right,” Katara smirks. “Because you have such a habit of ducking out of your responsibilities.”

“ _Katara_!” 

The squeal sends a chill up Katara’s spine, and that feeling does not fade when Ty Lee bounces up to her and throws her arms around Katara’s neck. 

“I am so glad to see you,” the girl gushes. “I can’t believe I haven’t seen you yet and you’ve been in the palace for months, practically, but I’ve been so busy! You look amazing —”

“Good to see you,” Katara says, extricating herself from Ty Lee’s grasp. She can’t help it. The chi blocker still creeps her out. 

“Ty Lee,” Zuko says with a tilt of his head. Then he smiles slightly at Katara. “There’s your intelligent conversation. I leave you in good hands — I have to speak to half a dozen people at least, or they’ll all be mortally offended. I’ll find you before the meteor shower starts.”

He’s gone before Katara can protest.

“He’s more slippery than he used to be,” she muses, almost not realizing she’s said it out loud.

Ty Lee giggles and slips her arm through Katara’s, just where Zuko’s arm was a moment before. In comparison, Ty Lee’s hands feel cold as new snow. The knot in Katara’s belly reemerges.

“He’s changed a lot,” Ty Lee says. “He’s had to. It’s been a hard few years. But he’s doing really well!”

“He’s good at this,” Katara says, watching Zuko make his way across the room. He wears a small smile, and his face is thoughtful and composed as he’s mobbed by people dressed in red silks. “Much better than he was at the coronation.”

Ty Lee wrinkles her nose. “All he does is work and train,” she says in the tone of one confiding a deep secret. “His aura gets so _blah_ from all the stress! But there hasn’t been an assassination attempt in months.”

Katara winces. “Did they used to be more frequent?”

“Oops,” Ty Lee says, eyes going wide. “He doesn’t like us mentioning them. Pretend I didn’t say anything?”

“Sure,” Katara says dryly. “I’ll just pretend like no one ever tries to murder Zuko. No problem.”

“We haven’t had a really good assassination attempt in years,” Ty Lee reassures her. “There was one right after the coronation that had us a little worried, but since then they’ve honestly been sub-par. Zuko has barely needed his bodyguards to take care of it.”

“Ty Lee. You’re not really helping.”

Ty Lee makes a face. “Sorry. We’re just used to it, I suppose. Oh! That didn’t help either.”

The acrobat’s earnest babbling reminds Katara so painfully of Aang for just a moment that she softens and smiles at the other girl. “You’ve kept him in one piece so far,” Katara says gently. “So I won’t criticize. You were here, after all. I wasn’t.”

Ty Lee’s eyes narrow. “Mai said something to you,” she guesses.

“Well. I mean —”

“She gets angry,” Ty Lee says, and she is more pensive than Katara has ever seen her. There is a furrow in between Ty Lee’s eyebrows, a little ditch filled with worry and caring and all of the baggage that comes with loving someone who never explains themselves. “It’s just because she’s scared. Her aura gets so twisted and worried when she thinks about Zuko — she feels like she’s the only one in the world looking out for him. But it’s not fair. You and the Avatar and your friends had other responsibilities after the war. Mai’s just…protective. And she feels more comfortable being mad than being worried.” 

That is something Katara understands. “You don’t have to defend her to me, Ty Lee,” Katara says. She shoves aside the broiling anxiety that Ty Lee’s presence always engenders and sets one hand over Ty Lee’s with a grin. “Now how about you show me where we find the good drinks around here?”

***

Zuko watches Katara over the rim of his wine glass and listens to the conversation around him with half an ear. Zuko does not let himself stare. Not letting himself stare at Katara is a habit that he has been cultivating since the war. But he lets himself watch her.

She is stunning in ice-blue silk, her hair piled on top of her head and her ocean eyes lined with kohl. He didn’t say, when he saw her in the doorway, how breathtakingly lovely she looked. But he assumes she knows, from the way that the Fire Nation elite gather around her as she moves through the room. She has lost the nervous pallor that she wore when Zuko first passed her off to Ty Lee; now she is sparkling, confident, easily charming. 

“You look like an idiot staring off into space that way,” says Mai as she appears, silent as usual, at his elbow.

He manages not to jump. Zuko hates to admit that Mai manages to sneak up on him so often; he has trained himself not to jump when she does, in hopes that she doesn’t realize that she’s startled him. He’s pretty sure she knows anyway. “I’m not staring off into space,” he says. “I’m…thinking.”

Zuko doesn’t need to be looking at Mai to know she’s rolling her eyes. “Thinking about the waterbender,” she says. “You’re still so obvious.”

“I have no idea what you mean,” Zuko says flatly. He isn’t sure why Mai’s words instantly irritate him, like a burr under his robe — but they do. 

“Sure,” she says, and there is a smirk in her voice. “We can pretend you’re not mooning after her, if you want.”

“I don’t moon,” he grumbles, and shoots a glare at her from his good eye. Even after all these years, Mai stands on his good side most of the time. “Is there a reason you’re bothering me?”

She shrugs. “Checking in. You let whoever planned this party give out too many invitations, and the pavilion gates aren’t guarded heavily enough.”

“Great to see you, too, Mai,” Zuko says, dry. “You look lovely this evening.”

She shrugs again and meanders away. “Also, you asked me to tell you when Zhujim arrived,” she says over her shoulder. “He’s here.”

Zuko’s eyes narrow, and he casts his gaze about the room to find the portly senior minister of agriculture. _You_ , he thinks to himself, _are mine_. 

***

The night air is thick and warm, and Katara feels ever so slightly lightheaded as Ty Lee introduces her to red-robed bureaucrats and nobles — several of whom have insisted on refilling her glass with chilled wine, and all of whom have called her ‘Lady Katara’ and bowed to hide their sneers. Katara refuses to let it bother her. She smiles her kindest, warmest, best Sugar-Queen smile, and asks about estates and committees and children and hobbies as though there is nothing more fascinating than the details of the lives of people who hate her.

“You’re doing really well,” Ty Lee reassures her as they glide away from yet another pair of insipid noblewomen. “I wouldn’t even have blamed you if you’d thrown ice daggers at that last woman.”

Katara smiles sheepishly at the other girl. “I froze her drink solid when she wasn’t looking,” she admits. 

Ty Lee chokes on a laugh. “When we were younger, Mai threw a knife and pinned some nobleman’s topknot to the pillar he was leaning against because he’d been rude to Zuko. He didn’t even notice until he tried to move. And then once, Azula —” she stops, eyes widening, and bites her lip.

Katara reaches out on an impulse and grabs Ty Lee’s hand. “She was your friend for a really long time,” she says, kind. “You don’t have to pretend that you don’t miss her. Not around me.” 

(In the back of Katara’s mind, there is a broken child who is screaming through her sobs. Katara has not stopped hearing those screaming cries for years, and she will not begrudge anyone who loved that child before Katara broke her.)

Ty Lee’s eyes fill with tears. “You’re even nicer than Suki said you were,” she mumbles, and squeezes Katara’s hand before gulping down the rest of her wine, and her tears with it. The acrobat gives Katara a bright smile that is only slightly shaky. “Let’s find some food!”

The food is spicy and helps break up the hard fist of resentment that has settled in the base of Katara’s throat. Ty Lee slips her arm through Katara’s and leads her in aimless circles around the pavilion (she claims this will keep people from approaching them, but all it seems to accomplish is making Katara dizzy). They only stop when they’ve reached the little dais where the musicians play, and Ty Lee sighs. 

“I love this song,” she says, starry-eyed. 

Katara smiles behind her wine glass and gives the other girl a little push. “Go ask your girl to dance,” she says, nodding towards Mai. “I’ll be fine.”

Ty Lee kisses Katara’s cheek with a happy squeal. “Don’t move,” she instructs. “I’ll be back before you know it.” She dashes away.

Katara sips at her chilled wine and watches as Ty Lee drags her girlfriend out to the dance floor. Mai rolls her eyes and puts up a show of resistance, but she smiles as Ty Lee pulls her into the first steps of a Fire Nation dance. Something in Katara’s chest aches as she watches the two girls circle each other gracefully. She does not miss being Aang’s girlfriend, truly — but she misses knowing that there is always someone who wants to dance with _her_.

“Care to dance?”

Katara jumps, sloshing chilled wine on her hand. She frowns at Zuko as she bends the liquid off of her wrist and back into her glass. “Don’t sneak up on me like that.”

He gives her a smile that does not reach his eyes. “It’s hardly my fault if you’re not paying attention, waterbender.” He offers her a hand. “Shall we?”

She rolls her eyes and sets her glass down. “I haven’t gotten any better at this in the last few years,” she warns him, but she takes his hand. 

“I’ll add dance lessons on top of your pai sho lessons,” Zuko says, but his voice lacks the light tone of amusement it normally carries when he teases her. His eyes are focused somewhere above her head, watching the crowd behind them. 

“Quite a party,” Katara remarks. 

Zuko makes a face. “I hate these things,” he confesses. “I feel like I’m on display.”

“I know how you feel.”

“Oh? Have you been Fire Lord lately?”

“No,” she says, “but I have been the Avatar’s girlfriend, and the world’s only female waterbending Master. I got used to people staring — even if they were mostly staring at Aang.”

“After the war?”

“Yeah. We traveled around a lot, when we were looking for airbenders. And we stopped to visit a lot of places. Aang thought it would be good for the peace efforts if we sort of —”

“Showed off?” Zuko asks dryly.

Katara frowns at him. “We were not showing off,” she says (conveniently forgetting, for a moment, the many, many times she’d thought the same thing when Aang did airbending tricks and made friends with locals). 

“You might not have been.”

“Aang wasn’t showing off, either!”

“Katara, all Aang _does_ is show off.”

“That’s not true.”

Zuko gives her an incredulous look. “Are we still talking about the same kid?”

Katara narrows her eyes. “He’s not just a kid, Zuko. He’s the Avatar. He was doing something important —”

“Right,” Zuko says, amber eyes glittering with an emotion Katara cannot name. “Because the air-scooters and the field trips to ride elephant koi were really keeping the world from coming apart at the seams.”

“He was doing the best he could.”

“No, he was doing whatever he wanted,” Zuko snaps. “Just like he always does.”

Katara wants to reel back, wants to step away from the sudden venom in Zuko’s voice, from the hard expression on his face that she barely recognizes. She does not, because she refuses to make a scene. “That’s not fair,” she says. Her voice is whisper-quiet and war-cry-fierce. “He saved the entire world as a twelve-year-old, Zuko, and then everyone was looking at him to keep fixing things, and —”

“And he spent all his time goofing off and flitting around the globe,” Zuko says, and his eyes are like thunder over the tundra in winter. “While Sokka rebuilt the South Pole and I sentenced my _father_ to _death_ and sent my _sister_ into _exile_ , Aang was darting from one town to the next, looking for airbenders and showing off. And you just followed him around, taking care of whatever he couldn’t be bothered to notice.”

Katara gapes at him. “I did not just _follow him around_ ,” she hisses. 

“You did, and if you’d be honest with yourself for a second you’d realize that you’re angry with him too!”

“I’m not angry with anyone!” 

Zuko scoffs. “Sure,” he says. “Keeping the peace as usual, then. And most importantly — taking care of the Avatar!”

“That is not fair,” Katara says again, and she wants to scream, she wants to turn the hot lump in her throat into violence, she wants to bathe Zuko in ice until the fury in his eyes cools and turns back into the easy camaraderie they have built. 

“None of this is fair, Katara,” he says, and his eyes and his voice are bitter, bitter, bitter. “None of it. Aang just pretended it was, and the rest of us let him.”

“He’s your friend!”

“Yes,” Zuko agrees, and the fight seems to go out of him. “He is. And he’s yours, in spite of everything. That’s what makes it all worse, don’t you think?”

There is a collective gasp, and the crowd flows towards the gardens and the windows of the pavilion. A flash of light streaks over Zuko’s hardened face. 

“The meteor shower,” the Fire Lord murmurs. His eyes are once again on the crowd, scanning above Katara’s head, unfocused on her. He glances back down at her for a moment, but the gold of his eyes is fogged over with distraction. “My apologies, Katara. I lost my temper and forgot myself. I was…wrong to attack you like that. Excuse me, please. I have to go.”

He’s gone before she can insist that they continue the argument, that they solve whatever tangle suddenly lies between them. She wants to drag him back and beat at him with words and bending until he confesses whatever hurt is burrowed beneath his skin. Instead, he has left her standing alone, bathed in the uneven celestial light. Zuko apologized; years of fighting with Sokka means that Katara knows that an apology means she technically won the fight. The (technical) victory lies sour and heavy on her tongue.

(When she fights with Sokka, that taste means that she has not, actually, won. Katara hates the taste of a technical victory.)

She looks over the crowd, wanting to know what had distracted Zuko just before he left — because he had looked distracted, spirits curse him, and if that hadn’t contributed to whatever just happened, Katara will eat a platypus-bear.

She has never made good hasty decisions. Katara does best when she plans, when she thinks things through. Things tend to explode when Katara improvises. When Ty Lee had introduced Katara to the portly minister named Zhujim, Katara had intended to take some time to make a plan to deal with him.

Now, her gaze alights on Zhujim, who is making his way towards an exit, and she thinks to herself that something exploding would not be entirely unsatisfying — considering her mood.

Katara does not do well when she improvises. She does not have a plan. She follows Zhujim anyway.

***

He wants, desperately, to roar out his frustration, to breathe flames towards the sky until the clenched fist in his chest relaxes. He does not.

Zuko shoves the voice aside that demands to know what he was thinking, exactly, to slash at Katara that way. That voice can wait until morning. It can wait until he has proof that his agricultural minister is up to something sinister.

Spirits, does he always sound this paranoid?

Zuko adjusts the mask over his face so that it doesn’t press against his nose and settles farther back into the shadows. Zhujim went into the dim little backroom in the tavern more than half an hour ago, but Zuko is fairly sure that there is no other exit, so he is prepared to wait.

Wait.

_Is that?_

Zuko is going to kill her.

Katara’s black clothes do not hide the dull shine of the moon and the meteor shower on her hair, and her lithe movements through the alleyway are (to Zuko) unmistakeable. 

The night of the full moon had been bad enough. Seeing her stumble into the gang of back-alley toughs had nearly given Zuko an aneurysm; the way her face had tightened when one of the thugs had grabbed her arms had sent his heart plummeting into his stomach. Katara’s fear unsettles him as much as her anger does — more, even, because he has so rarely seen her afraid.

This is worse than that. He watches Katara settle underneath a windowsill, her ear tilted up towards the glass. Black cloth obscures the lower half of her face; a waterskin lies heavy against one hip. She taps her hand restlessly against the stopper on the waterskin, and her dark brows knit into an angry vee in reaction to whatever she’s hearing from inside. 

He knows she can take care of herself. He’s aware. He can barely hold his own against her when she’s on her toes.

That doesn’t mean Zuko isn’t tempted to throw her over his shoulder and haul her back to the palace.

She has no idea how dangerous Fire Nation politics are. Lives are made and destroyed and ended on the tilt of a head or the shake of a hand in the palace — and that is the sunny side of things. This is the seedy underbelly of Fire Nation politics, the thick stew of corruption that had simmered its way into a raging boil during the reigns of Azulon and Ozai. This is a poisonous swamp in which Zuko himself is still wary of wading too deep. Katara is smart and tough and, when she wants to be, scary. But she is a girl from a fishing village, and he cannot let her dive into this — this — this _muck_. 

Katara will get hurt, and it will be his fault.

Zuko is slipping off his perch on the roof before he is all the way done with his train of thought. He will sneak up on her, make her go back to the palace, and then finish dealing with Zhujim. 

(No one makes Katara do anything, but Zuko figures he will deal with that stage of the plan when he gets to it.)

But when he appears next to her in the dim alley, her eyes light with joy — such a strong contrast from the fury and hurt that had been there during their dance at the meteor watch party that Zuko cannot bring himself to start another argument. He stays silent, and hopes she can feel the strength of his glare through the mask.

“Good to see you again,” Katara whispers. Her eyes glint with a fierce determination that he has not seen in a long while. She points up at the window. “You’re here for Lord Zhujim?”

I _’m here for you, now. Go back to the palace_.

“Good. So am I. Let’s find out what he’s up to, hmm?”

Zuko frowns at her behind the mask. _I’m going to lock you in the library._

Katara frowns and sheathes one hand in water. “Do you hear that?” she asks.

Zuko shakes his head. 

“They stopped talking,” she murmurs. “They left.”

Zuko shakes his head again, points at the door. _There’s only one exit._

Katara raises her eyebrows at him. “Right, because a super-creepy secret meeting with evil plotters definitely takes place in normal buildings with only one door.”

A head tilt. _What, so you think there is some sort of hidden door or something? Come on._

“Let’s get inside, see if there’s another door,” she whispers.

Zuko would be tempted to smack himself in the forehead, if there wasn’t a mask in the way.

“I’ll take lead,” she says. “You hang back, go around the outside. Watch my back, okay? I’m a little less conspicuous than you are.”

_Katara, don’t you dare! If he sees your face and recognizes you, you’re dead._

But she is already slipping into the tavern. Zuko curses under his breath and frees up his Dao swords in the sheath — just in case he needs them in a hurry. Then he waits. It takes no time at all for nervous sweat to start beading up between his shoulder blades, dampening his shirt and making it stick to his skin. The humid air presses down on him, and an insect buzzes into the space between his mask and his cheek. Seconds crawl by, and his heart pounds steadily harder. Zuko stares at the door, willing Katara to appear.

It takes too long. He’s on the verge of busting in the door, Dao swords swinging, and damn the consequences, when Katara ducks out of the door and crouches next to him. He frowns ferociously. She can’t see him, but the frown makes him feel better anyway.

“Zhujim and two guards went down a hallway in the back,” she whispers. “They were following a man in dark clothes — fine cloth, well-cut. There were stairs, headed down — I think there’s a basement. But there’s a scary-looking guy who blocked me when I tried to follow. Let’s check for a back entrance.”

Zuko wonders what an aneurysm feels like.

Katara pulls a stretch of black cloth back over her mouth and jerks her head towards the tavern. Zuko unsheathes his swords and follows her, and prays to whatever spirit is listening that he won’t regret this.

***

Katara is bored.

“They have to come out eventually,” she tells the spirit beside her.

The spirit cocks their head and makes an impatient motion with their hand — a very clear _hush, I’m listening!_

“You can’t hear anything either,” she hisses. It’s true; from where they perch over a back-alley stair leading down to the basement where Zhujim and his cronies are lurking, they can barely hear anything. There is sometimes raucous laughter, and occasionally a muffled shout. Katara is fairly sure they’re gambling.

She _hates_ gambling.

The spirit turns their mask towards Katara, and she gets the very distinct impression that they are frowning at her. 

She frowns back. “Well, you can’t,” she mutters. Katara settles back against the roof ledge on which she’s perched and crosses her arms. “Did you follow Zhujim from the palace?”

A nod.

“Yeah, me too. There was a…party tonight.”

The spirit seems to tense beside her, and the eerie blue mask does not move its gaze away from her face. _Go on_ , the mask seems to tell her.

“I was there,” she continues. “It was okay, I suppose — until it wasn’t. And then I saw Zhujim, and all I could think about was how the whole palace is just drowning with these — these — these awful people, these people who loved the war and profited off of it. I guess I thought those kinds of people would just be gone when the war was over. But they’re not.” Katara curls her knees up to her chest and wraps her arms around her legs. She rests her chin on her knees, stares pensively at the armadillo-rat scrounging through a pile of garbage in the shadows of the alleyway. “All that work we did. All the danger and the fear and the hiding and the running — and it’s not over. The work isn’t done. It doesn’t seem fair.”

The spirit tilts its head. Katara thinks maybe it is an expression of sympathy, or maybe it is a way to say _yes, of course there is still work to do, what did you expect?_

“I’m tired,” she confesses. Then she straightens her spine and scowls at the armadillo-rat. “But the Fire Lord is my friend, and I’m not going to just sit around drinking plum wine while Zhujim and men like him plot against the Fire Lord.” Katara smiles at the spirit. “I’m glad I’m not the only one who feels that way.”

The spirit leans forward and taps one black-gloved finger against Katara’s waterskin, and then taps the hilt of their twin swords. _You keep fighting, and so will I._

On impulse, Katara reaches out and squeezes the spirit’s hand with hers. It’s warm — warmer than she had expected, and the gloves are smooth, supple leather. “Thank you,” she says, sincere. “For this, and for — the last time. I’m glad I met you.”

The spirit taps a gloved finger against the back of Katara’s hand. Katara assumes that means _same here_. It could very well be _l_ _et go of me_ , though, so she does.

“Want to play mumblety-peg?” Katara asks, nodding towards the spirit’s swords.

They tilt their head at her in what she can only describe as an incredulous fashion.

“Alright, alright,” Katara mutters, and leans back against the roof ledge once more. “But if Zhujim doesn’t come out soon, I’m going to die of boredom.”

It is the darkest part of the night, between midnight and dawn, before Zhujim emerges from the basement. Katara is drowsing with her head tilted back against the brick wall behind her when the spirit nudges her and points down to the alley, where Zhujim is strolling up the stairs with a noticeable sway to his step. Katara sits up, alertness flooding her limbs. 

“Follow him?” she murmurs, and the spirit nods.

They slip off the roof and into the shadows surrounding Zhujim. If there is an easy familiarity to their movements, a back-sliding, a falling into an old rhythm like breathing, Katara does not notice.

***

They trail Zhujim away from the tavern, sticking to the shadows and staying far enough away that the two burly goons following the minister do not notice them. Katara takes point, keeping her eye on Zhujim; the spirit follows slightly behind her and to her right. Their footsteps are nearly silent; if Katara didn’t already know that they were there, she would think she is alone. 

Zhujim wanders deeper into the seedy part of the city. Katara and the spirit slip past darkened doorways echoing with the sounds of drunken snoring or amorous giggles. Zhujim pays no attention to the vice that surrounds him; he walks purposefully (hampered only slightly by his own apparent inebriation). He pauses twice; each time, one of the men following him stalk into an alleyway, or a decrepit building, and come back with a package or a small coinpurse or spirits only know what else.

Katara’s frustration and hurt and guilt and anger and homesickness and fear come to a raging boil in the pit of her belly. She relishes in the focus it gives her, rides the wave of tension as it washes through her body. She will not let these feelings control her. She will use them — as a weapon, to stop Zhujim from whatever it is that he’s doing. 

Katara follows _no one_ but her own conscience. 

Filled suddenly with reckless energy, Katara gestures to the spirit that they should follow her lead. She could swear she hears an exasperated sigh, but it doesn’t matter — she is already in motion. Zhujim’s bodyguards are about to walk past a dark alley, and Katara can feel liquid lying just out of sight in the darkness. She seizes it, wraps a fluid rope around one man’s wrist and yanks him into the alleyway. She ices him to the wall and freezes his mouth shut before he can yell.

It’s only then, when Katara goes to check her handiwork, that she realizes that she’s bending some sort of sludgy liquid that can barely be called water. Katara wrinkles her nose and decides she’d rather not identify what exactly is in the fluid. “Sorry,” she whispers to the man, who is struggling against his icy bonds with murder in his eyes. A moment later, his companion crumples to the ground, clearly unconscious.

“Nice work,” Katara says to the spirit, who manages to look annoyed with her despite the mask. She turns to go after Zhujim, but a wall of fire greets her instead. She can hear Zhujim cursing from the other side, and his footsteps against the cobblestones as he flees.

Katara swears and drags water up from the street to douse the flames, but the spirit’s hand on her arm stops her. They shake their head and point at the collapsed bodyguard, who is groaning slightly as he comes to. A satchel lies on the ground next to him, gold and parchment peeking out of the gap where the bag is sagged open. Katara bares her teeth in a savage grin and snatches the bag off the ground.

“It’s a list,” she says, scanning the first scrap of paper. “Names, and amounts of money per week.” She looks up to the spirit, who is tensed and quivering like a bowstring. “It’s a list of the people that Zhujim is extorting. And these are…addresses, I think?”

The spirit takes the list from her and looks over it. They point at the list, and then towards the air, and then they make a large circle with their hand. _These addresses are spread all over the city._

“Then who’s collecting? Zhujim can’t be everywhere, and he’s obviously not personally going around shaking down business people in the city.”

The spirit points at the man that is iced to the wall.

Katara mutters a few words that would make Gran-Gran reach for a bar of soap. “He’s running gangs,” she says. “Of course.” With a quick jerk of her hand, Katara melts the ice that is sealing the conscious man’s mouth. 

“Alright,” Katara tells the man. “Here’s the deal. You tell me where I can find your boss, and I won’t let my friend here slice you to ribbons with those swords of theirs.”

To punctuate her point, the spirit slides the swords out of the sheath with a quiet _shink._

The man’s eyes narrow. “You’re bluffing! You can’t threaten me, you little —”

There is a flash of reflected light, and then the thug’s shirt is hanging open where the Dao blades have sliced through the fabric. A few beads of blood well up in a shallow cut that stretches from the man’s navel to his collarbone. The point of the sword in question rests at the quivering hollow of the man’s throat. 

The spirit tilts their head at the man _. She’s not bluffing_ , their posture seems to say, or _maybe you ought to think twice about insulting her._

“Maybe start talking,” Katara suggests.

The thug does not remove his eyes from the spirit’s grimacing mask as he rattles off an address. “The top floor,” he says. “The lower floors are a laundromat and some apartments. Zhujim conducts all his meetings in the offices at the top of the building — he can get in and out by a private stair so no one can track him coming and going.”

Katara glances at the spirit. “You know how to get there?” They nod. “Then let’s go,” she says, jerking her head. The spirit takes off in a light jog, and Katara follows.

Behind them, the thug, still iced to the wall, bellows in outrage.

***

Zuko is not above admitting when he’s in too deep. 

_Too deep_ occurred about an hour ago.

The plan had been to trail Zhujim; collect damning evidence, make sure it ended up in the right hands, quietly, so that Zuko could take apart Zhujim’s budding criminal empire without making a fuss or seeming to have gotten his hands dirty. Katara blew up the plan nearly the second she arrived.

The plan is now, apparently, to go to the very heart of Zhujim’s operation and bludgeon him into submission. Katara jogs next to him, her eyes narrowed in deadly focus and her mouth set in a firm line. (Zuko is also not above admitting that Katara is rather breathtaking when she’s in bludgeoning mode.) 

Zuko fumes silently as he leads Katara through the darkened streets towards the address the bodyguard had give them. He wishes he hadn’t committed to this ridiculous ‘silent spirit’ thing. He wishes he’d torn the mask off and ordered Katara to get back to the palace.

He wishes he hadn’t picked that stupid fight with her about — well. All of them, Zuko and all the other half-children who fought in the war, know how Katara is about Aang. She has always refused to hear anything critical of the Avatar, Zuko thinks bitterly, and he has no idea why he would have thought that would change just because she’d dumped him.

Zuko had thought that perhaps Katara resented Aang. He stills thinks that she might; but her instinct to protect Aang is so much stronger than the bitter anger he had seen simmering deep in the ocean depths of her eyes. He will leave it alone, he swears to himself. He had been doing so well until the meteor shower party. He has gotten so much better at biting his tongue since the war, but there is something about talking to Katara that makes him just say whatever’s on his mind.

Even when what’s on his mind is accusing Katara of playing second tsungi horn to Aang for years, apparently.

Zuko will kick himself about that later. For now, he will lead Katara to Zhujim and let her take out her anger on him, and then tomorrow he will…apologize, or something.

Spirits, he _really_ does not want to apologize.

The building where Zhujim is allegedly hiding is made of dirty brown stone, weather-worn and chipped away around the peeling doorframes. True to their information, rickety stairs lead up to a door on the top floor. Katara pulls her scarf higher over her cheekbones and nods to him. Zuko unsheathes his swords and gestures towards the stairs. _Following you_.

She moves with deadly grace as she uncaps her waterskin and starts up the stairs. The dilapidated boards creak nearly silently under her boots, and the air in her wake seems to vibrate as she sheathes her hands in liquid. Zuko follows close behind her, eyes narrowed in concentration behind the mask. 

Zhujim is seated at a table, reading by one dim lamp when they burst through the door. He does not start; he only looks up and narrows his eyes. 

“You, I’ve heard of,” he says, pointing his pen at Zuko. “You’re new.” He gestures contemptuously at Katara.

She laughs. It’s a low, throaty, dark noise, thoroughly unlike her normal bell-peal of joy. It is a sound that sinks itself into danger, revels in it. “I haven’t needed to introduce myself yet, Zhujim,” she says, and her voice is quiet and velvety and quite nearly a purr. Electric energy dances along Zuko’s skin at the sound, and he rolls his shoulders back to quell the quivering of his spine. “But you’ve started to annoy me.”

Zhujim tilts his head. “How unfortunate for us both. I’ve annoyed you, and you’ve ruined my door.”

“You’re running gangs,” Katara continues. “And they’re extorting the Fire Lord’s citizens. That’s impolite, Zhujim. You’re going to need to stop.”

“And who in the world are you, to tell me what to do?” Zhujim’s tone is light, amused. Unafraid. 

Zuko adjusts his grip on his swords, and prepares to change that.

Katara moves before he does. There is a sudden blur of motion, and then Zhujim is pinned to his chair with several foot-long daggers of ice. His eyes finally widen with anxiety.

“It wasn’t a request,” Katara murmurs, moving over to rifle through the papers on Zhujim’s desk. “You’ll sit here, thinking about everything you’ve done badly, and you’ll wait for the Fire Lord’s guards to arrive and then you’ll go rot in prison.”

“I really wouldn’t pursue this,” Zhujim says, bored.

“Do you mean to tell me I won’t find the proof I’m looking for?” Katara says lightly, not looking up.

“Oh, you’ll definitely find it,” Zhujim says, and he sounds as cool as the ice shards that pierce his sleeves. “But it’s really not advisable that you share it, my dear. I am the only thing keeping the more…unsavory aspects of this city from reaching absolutely uncontrollable levels. The minister of crime, as it were. If you turn me over to the Fire Lord, you may find that this city becomes rather unmanageable.”

Katara whips one hand through the air, and Zhujim’s head snaps back in wake of the water that whips across his face. “You’re a slimy, conniving bottom-feeder, and you’re going to tell me why you’re doing all of this.”

“Why?” Zhujim retorts. “You’ve already threatened to turn me in, and the Blue Spirit is infamous for refusing to kill people. So why should I tell you anything?”

Katara shrugs, abandoning her search through the papers. “I guess you shouldn’t. After all, I won’t torture you for a confession. You should save your information for the Fire Lord’s guards, so that they can torture you for a confession.”

Zhujim still doesn’t balk. “I’m a minister and a noble. They won’t torture me.”

Katara tilts her head in a chillingly accurate replicate of Zhujim’s own arrogant gesture. “Maybe. Can I take a few guesses, my lord? You are trying to garner power in the Caldera’s underground, so that you can threaten or blackmail or murder your way into power in the palace. When you’ve got enough ministers and advisers in your pocket, the Fire Lord won’t be able to afford to offend you. Am I getting anywhere?”

Zhujim presses his lips together tightly.

“I thought so,” Katara says. Zuko can nearly hear the satisfied smile that she wears. “Good to know. Well, Lord Zhujim, it’s been fun. Let us know how the inside of the prison looks.”

“You’ll regret this,” he murmurs.

“Come on,” Katara says to Zuko. “Let’s get out of here. The evidence is all in the desk, we just need to get the guards here.”

Zuko starts towards the door, and then a thought strikes him.

The fire in the alley.

Zhujim is a firebender.

The roar of heat and light pierces the air just as Zuko throws himself towards Katara, tackling her against the wall as fire surrounds them. The fabric of his shirt turns to ash and he feels the heat lick against his back as he shields the little waterbender. Katara presses her face against his shoulder, and Zuko can hear the muffled cursing as she voices her frustration. He presses her tighter against his chest, and waits for the fire to end.

The moment it does, Katara pops up and sends a wall of icy blades spinning towards the wall. Zhujim is already gone. Zuko staggers to his feet, bringing the tips of his swords up. They waver as he fights against the sickening wave of pain from his back. 

Katara swears and dashes over to the desk. “The papers are still here,” she says grimly. “I can turn this over to the Fire Lord and get Zhujim arrested anyway. Spirits, I thought we —” she looks up, and sees Zuko swaying on his feet, and says something that would make a scarred veteran soldier blush like a schoolgirl. “You’re hurt. Come here.”

The cool relief of her waterbending takes a few moments to soothe the raging burn. Zuko knows from experience that means the burn is nasty, and he is glad that he cannot see his back. Katara pulls the scarf down from where it hides her face and frowns in concentration.

“Thank you,” she says sincerely, not looking up from her work. “You saved my life right there. I’m glad we teamed up tonight.”

Zuko scowls at her. _That makes one of us. You almost got killed._

“This will take me a second to heal,” she says, and then smiles up at him. “Waterbending thing. It comes in handy, but for something this big, I need some time. Sit down, please.” When he hesitates, she reaches up to grab him by the shoulder and forces him to the ground. Zuko’s head spins. 

“I guess this answers my questions about whether you’re a real spirit or not,” Katara says conversationally as she works. “Spirits don’t bleed. And I doubt you’re one of my people. Even the Northerners don’t use swords that look like that.”

Zuko freezes. Does she know?

“But you clearly have the spirit’s blessing,” she continues without breaking pace. Zuko relaxes a bit. “I asked about you, you know. The people call you the Blue Spirit, and they say you’re the spirit of honor —” Zuko manages not to choke — “and peace. That you fought against the Fire Nation in the war, and now you protect the people of the Caldera from corruption and violence.”  
  
 _More like I’m tired of being trapped in the palace feeling useless, but sure_.

“Do you not speak by choice, or are you unable?” 

Now would be his best chance to confess, to identify himself. Something stops him. Zuko just tilts his head at her instead. He’s noticed that she seems to accept that as a response, and usually just extrapolates whatever she thinks he’s saying.

As predicted, she colors slightly in response. “You’re right, it’s not my business. Sorry. That was rude.”

He gives her a shrug. 

“Is it okay if I call you Blue?”

Zuko stares at her. _You…are giving me a…nickname?_ He’s not sure how he feels about it. The only people who have ever given him a nickname were Azula and Toph. 

(And Jun, he supposes, but she technically only called him ‘prince pouty’ the one time. That probably doesn’t count.)

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Katara decides. “You’re all patched up, Blue.” She smiles up at him. “Good thing I was here, huh? I’d hate to see my new ally charred to bits. Besides…” she hesitates. “I don’t know. I feel…easy with you, I guess. Like I know you somehow. Maybe it’s because you don’t talk, so you’re easy to talk to.”

 _You’ve got to be starved for confidants if you’re settling for me_ , he thinks.

Katara gathers the papers off Zhujim’s desk and casts a critical eye around the room. “I guess we’d better search the place for anything else,” she sighs. “And then I need to get back to the palace, sneak into the Fire Lord’s office, and plant these where he’ll see them.” She scowls down at the desk. “And maybe hide something poky and unpleasant on his office chair,” she mutters grimly.

Alright, so maybe keeping his identity a secret is a good call.

They search the room from top to bottom, and Katara finally calls a halt when the night takes on the graying hue of the time just before dawn. They have found two stashes of paper and money, one of which is piled with letters written in some kind of code. Any other evidence of Zhujim’s crimes will have to be recovered by Zuko’s men later, once he ‘finds’ the evidence in his office later.

Zuko gestures at the papers, then at the pouch attached to the sash at his waist. _Give those to me. I’ll do it._

Katara shakes her head and tucks the papers into her sash. “No, I live in the palace. I have access to the Fire Lord’s office, there’s no need for you to put yourself in danger.” 

Zuko stares at her in consternation. Having committed to the farce, he can’t now exactly tell her that it would be easier to just hand him the papers — and he also can’t give any persuasive argument as to why she should give them to him, because she is convinced that he can’t (or won't) talk. Zuko has never wanted so badly to swear.

Katara reaches out and squeezes his hand. “I’m headed back to the palace,” she says. “You should go and rest. I’ll make sure these get to the right people.”

Zuko squeezes back in helpless agreement, and drops her hand. She gives a resolute nod.

“Meet me in three nights at the gate that leads to the palace garden,” she instructs. “If Zhujim hasn’t been caught by then, we’ll track him down. And if he has been, we can see about catching up with his collaborators.”

 _NO,_ Zuko longs to shout. This is the opposite of what he wants. He wants her to pat herself on the back for a job well done, go back to the palace, and stay there, where he can keep her safe. He does not want her diving back into this mess.

But before he can figure out a way to communicate that silently, Katara is gone.

Zuko indulges himself in a long, creative stream of curses — then he stops as a thought occurs to him, and he groans.

He needs to get back to the palace, and make sure that his guards don’t catch Katara sneaking into his office.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, thank you, thank you if you're still checking in. I had to take a break while I was taking my licensing exams and then finding a job (hooray!) but all that is behind me now and so I can get back to writing. Literally every time one of you pops in with kudos or a comment it makes my entire day.
> 
> Let me know what y'all think of the update! This chapter feels...short(?) to me? Idk. Tell me if it feels short. Or long! Whatever, I am desperate for feedback and interaction.
> 
> Ily all so much :) and happy holidays, babes!


	6. Interlude: Protection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For every action as the Blue Spirit, there is an equal and arguably more dangerous action that must be taken as Fire Lord.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DON'T YELL AT ME I KNOW IT'S SHORT OKAY

“Is it enough evidence?” Zuko asks gravely.

“More than,” Mai says. “He turned himself into a crime lord. His gangs were demanding bribes from business owners, who would pass information about customers — their spending habits, their debts, their affairs, their addictions. It was quite the little enterprise.”

“How long had it been going on?”

He already knows the answer.

“Since you were crowned.”

Zuko rubs a hand over his chin, feels the scrape of stubble.

“This could get dangerous.”

He says nothing.

“Zhujim had a finger in every pie, Zuko. Without him in charge, we could be looking at a gang war.”

Silence.

Steel flashes, and there is a stiletto blade between his pointer and middle finger, sunk a quarter-inch into the wood of his desk. Zuko raises his eyebrows at Mai.

“Stop ignoring me,” Mai says flatly. “I’m serious, Zuko. The underbelly of the Caldera is going to very quickly become a problem for us. You need to take this seriously.”

“So what should I do, exactly?”

“Protect whoever’s important, first of all.”

Blue eyes glint in his mind’s eye. “And then?”

Mai pauses a long moment. “And then pray.”

***

They gather in rooms all over the city. Some rooms are dim, and dank, and small. Some are softly aglow with the light of expensive oil lamps or wax candles, and furnished with plush velvet and soft leather. The setting does not matter. The people who gather there do. In many ways they are entirely dissimilar. Their clothes are not cut from the same cloth; some of them look on the brink of starvation while others grow fat on their wealth. Some of them are lean and dark and sharp; others seem easy and polished and safe. In every way that matters, though, they are the same: hardened, cold people with singular determination and bloodthirsty ambition. And every one of them has the same ambition — control.

 _The Caldera_ , swear a hundred voices in unison (each of them as fervent as the next), _will be mine_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would like to apologize to everyone who thought they were getting a new chapter, I am so sorry for giving you literally 340 words instead
> 
> B U T
> 
> I was writing the next chapter and I was trying to fill in the gaps for myself, and I thought y'all might like a little peek into the ~artistic process~
> 
> (you WILL have new content soon I swear work has been INSANE okay)


End file.
